Originally published July 8 2005
MasterCard latest company to reveal huge compromise of customer information
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Adding to the growing number of security breaches so far this year, MasterCard reports that 40 million customer accounts may have been exposed, including some customer accounts for Visa, American Express and Discover.
In what could be the largest data security breach to date, MasterCard International on Friday said information on more than 40 million credit cards may have been stolen.
Of those exposed accounts, about 13.9 million are for MasterCard-branded cards, the company said in a statement.
Some 20 million Visa-branded cards may have been affected and the remaining accounts were other brands, including American Express and Discover.
MasterCard and Visa both say they have notified their member banks of the specific accounts involved so the banks can take action to protect cardholders.
"In sheer numbers, this is probably one of the largest data security breaches," said James Van Dyke, principal analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research in Pleasanton, Calif.
News.context What's new: In what could be the largest data security breach in the world to date, information on 40 million credit card accounts might have been stolen.
Bottom line: The massive breach follows several high-profile data loss incidents that potentially exposed American consumers to identity theft.
The incident also comes as the public expresses increasing concern over identity theft.
The breach occurred at CardSystems Solutions in Tucson, Ariz., a third-party processor of payment data, according to a MasterCard statement.
An intruder was able to use security vulnerabilities to infiltrate the CardSystems network and access the cardholder data, MasterCard said.
CardSystems is one of several companies that process transactions for banks and merchants.
The security breach at the company was discovered using tools that monitor for credit card fraud, MasterCard said.
Though credit card numbers were compromised, the cards themselves do not hold social security numbers or dates of birth, MasterCard said.
Leslie Sutton, a spokeswoman for credit card company Discover, said the company is aware of the security breach and is working with law enforcement to investigate it.
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