Mastercard warns of "massive" accountholder breach. Why Bitcoins are Better.

[BitPay Business Solutions]

Initial report here:
http://krebsonsecurity.com/

Picked up by Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577313411294908868.html

Picked up by Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/03/30/visa-mastercard-warn-massive-security-breach-report-says/

While the number of cardholders affected is conflicting in the reports, this paragraph alone is the most shocking:

U.S. card issuers' total losses from credit- and debit-card fraud is an estimated $2.4 billion per year, according to a Consumer Reports article in June. Including merchants, credit card fraud costs U.S. establishments $52.6 billion annually, according to March 2011 Federal Reserve statistics.

it shows that the banks assume $2.4B in fraud, and push back $50.2B onto merchants.  Per year!  unbelievable.

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[hazek]

While the number of cardholders affected is conflicting in the reports, this paragraph alone is the most shocking:

U.S. card issuers' total losses from credit- and debit-card fraud is an estimated $2.4 billion per year, according to a Consumer Reports article in June. Including merchants, credit card fraud costs U.S. establishments $52.6 billion annually, according to March 2011 Federal Reserve statistics.

it shows that the banks assume $2.4B in fraud, and push back $50.2B onto merchants.  Per year!  unbelievable.

  Wow that's seriously messed up.

[Gabi]

HUGE numbers!

And this last breach seems serious.

Indeed, Bitcoin is better.

[Stephen Gornick]

HUGE numbers!

Is it?  56K according to the WSJ report.

a total of 56,455 member VISA and MasterCard accounts were compromised. PSCU said fraudulent activity had been detected on a relatively small number of those cards — 876 accounts — and that the activity was geographically dispersed.

As far as data breaches go, that's not huge.  They're obviously not being generous with concrete info though.  I'm sure at least one section of Visa's three football field-sized data center is positively humming right now looking for suspicious transactions:
 - http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-03-25/visa-data-center/53774904/1

[Gabi]

I was refering to "it shows that the banks assume $2.4B in fraud, and push back $50.2B onto merchants.  Per year!"

But on the site it says

Sources in the financial sector are calling the breach “massive,” and say it may involve more than 10 million compromised card numbers.

Sure, maybe it's not true, but maybe the 56k number is a way to hide the truth (a bit like the playstation hack)

[Stephen Gornick]

Sure, maybe it's not true, but maybe the 56k number is a way to hide the truth (a bit like the playstation hack)

Yikes, it is really was big!  Around 1.5 million credit card and debit card numbers were exposed.  Whether or not that includes the name and/or address data (name is on track 1 data) has not been confirmed.  Since this was an attack at the data center (Amazon Web Services) it is likely not to be just data from the magnetic stripe that was compromised.

 - http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/04/global-payments-rumor-and-innuendo/
 - http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9225769/Global_Payments_breach_raises_questions

[gnar1ta$]

Wonder if this is why my bank called me 30 seconds after I swiped my card at the same grocery store I always go to. Was weird, automated fraud call, on a card I use regularly.

ouch http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-visa-drops-payment-processing-firm-involved-in-breach-20120402,0,5154489.story