US credit card processor exposes masses of data

A MAJOR US credit card processing outfit has admitted that the personal data of tens of millions of its clients has been nicked in what could be one of the biggest hacks in US history.

Heartland Payment System said that card numbers, expiration dates, and in some cases cardholder names were exposed in hacker attacks on its systems. Apparently the data was unencrypted.

The hackers used sniffer software to capture authorisation data as Heartland asked for approval from major payment companies and banks. Victims were believed to be holders of Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover Financial cards.

While the company said it had "industry-leading encryption", the data has to be unencrypted to request the information. At that point the sniffer was able to grab that authorisation data.

Hackers managed to install the software in May. Heartland did not spot it until the autumn. During that time it processed nearly 600 million transactions that would have been watched by the hackers.

Personal security codes were not revealed by the hack and that might limit what the hackers could do with the data. µ