Credit card hacking has increasingly been a headache for credit card companies. With a lot of security and anti-phishing measures in place, hackers still find a security flaw to sneak through and get a bite out of other people’s money. In what could be one of the largest credit card hacks of recent times, hackers stole 1.5 million MasterCard and Visa credit card numbers recently.
As soon as Visa became aware of the huge security breach, it blocked the international credit card processor. So far, we haven’t been told exactly what security loophole did the hackers exploit and how did they get to pull off such a major attack. According to the company, ‘Based on the forensic analysis to date, network monitoring and additional security measures, the company believes that this incident is contained.’
It has also been told that during the attack, the hackers did not actually access the credit card numbers but also downloaded them. This data is, the company thinks, probably to be used to produce counterfeit credit cards for other criminal acts. However, the very thin streak of good news for the customers who have been affected is that their names, addresses or Social Security Numbers haven’t been compromised.
So far, Visa and MasterCard users who have been affected by this cyber-attack haven’t been notified.
Image courtesy Sparebanken.
