Card Processor Admits to Large Data Breach
WiredA large credit card processing company was breached in an attack late last year that may have compromised more than 100 million accounts. Heartland Payment Services, which processes debit and credit card transactions for 250,000 businesses, said it first learned around late October that it might have been hacked, but wasn't able to determine that its system had indeed been breached until last week. Heartland said the thieves did not obtain personal identification numbers or customer address information -- which limits the value of the card data to the thieves. Baldwin told Threat Level that Heartland first learned of a possible breach in late fall after Visa and MasterCard reported a pattern of suspicious transactions, but that the company initially received conflicting information that led it to believe the leak may have sprung outside of Heartland's systems.
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