MasterCard Warns Of Possible Data Breach
March 30 2012 - 11:57AM
Dow Jones News
MasterCard Inc. (MA) said Friday that it is investigating a
possible breach of cardholder account data involving a third
party.
The Purchase, N.Y., credit-card company said law enforcement has
been notified of the matter and an "independent data security
organization" is conducting a forensic review of the matter. The
company is alerting card-issuing banks regarding "certain
MasterCard accounts that are potentially at risk."
"MasterCard's own systems have not been compromised in any
manner," a company spokesman said in a statement. The company will
"continue to both monitor this event and take steps to safeguard
account information."
The spokesman declined to say how many cards may have been
compromised or how many banks it is notifying.
The breach was reported earlier Friday by the Krebs On Security
blog, which also said that Visa Inc. (V) was notifying banks about
a breach involving a third-party payment processor.
Representatives for Visa couldn't immediately be reached for
comment.
A notice Visa is sending to banks said it had been notified of a
security breach within a third-party payment processor. The
estimated window for the breach is Jan. 21 and Feb. 25, according
to a copy of the notice reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
"The network intrusion may have put accounts at risk of being
stolen," Visa said in the notice, adding that a forensic company is
working with the company in question and the U.S. Secret Service is
also investigating the breach. "The investigation is still in the
early stages and if additional accounts are determined to be at
risk" additional alerts will be distributed.
A notice sent to clients recently by PSCU, a technology company
that works with credit unions, said it received an alert from Visa
on March 23 about a possible incident with a third-party processor.
PSCU said the Visa alert identified 46,194 accounts that may have
been at risk, though after eliminating duplicate accounts, cards
with invalid expiration dates and cards not handled by PSCU, the
number of compromised Visa cards was reduced to 26,094.
"To date, the common point of compromise has not been
identified," PSCU's notice said.
PSCU couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
Visa and MasterCard don't lend or issue cards to consumers;
rather, they process transactions for banks that issue their cards
and those that handle transactions for merchants.
Representatives of several banks, including Bank of America
Corp. (BAC) and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM), either couldn't
be reached for comment or declined to comment Friday morning.
Cardholders who are concerned about their accounts should
contact the banks that issued them their cards, the company
said.
-By Andrew R. Johnson, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-3214
--Robin Sidel and Matthias Rieker contributed to this
article.
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