Visa & MasterCard security breach

(WPRI) - A security breach is affecting customers who have Visa or MasterCard accounts.  The data breach may be the largest ever in the country.

The credit card companies have begun to notify banks around the nation to contact customers whose accounts may have been compromised.

The data breach happened sometime in late 2008 and may have victimized tens of millions of credit and debit card customers.

The breach was just uncovered last week at a New Jersey payment processor, Heartland Payment Systems.  Investigators discovered a piece of malicious software planted on the company’s network that recorded payment card data as it was being sent for processing.

Robert Baldwin, who works for Heartland Payment Systems said, “We processed about 100 million transactions each month of last year. We don’t know, however, the percentage of those transactions that were actually being stored by the virus and then we don’t know the percentage of that, that got out to the bad guys.”

The sheer volume of transactions processed by Heartland leads cyber security expert Mark Kay to believe that this could be one of the biggest data breaches he’s ever seen.

“Those affected is being estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars at the end of the day of money being stolen through the accounts.”

The stolen data includes names, credit and debit card numbers and expiration dates.
The bottom line is cyber security experts say there is little a consumer can do to protect themselves from this type of fraud.

Credit card companies should refund any money for purchases deemed to be fraudulent. In the meantime, to protect your own personal computer and information, order a credit report and monitor your transactions and invest in anti-spy ware.