April 3,2009
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News: Credit-Card Data Theft; Symantec on the Case.
About two weeks ago, the BBC exposed a credit card breach. They were able to track the theft down to a source in Delhi, India where they were actually able to purchase a small sample of stolen credit cards (under cover but on film) from someone called Saurabh Sachar. They've even posted the video in the web from a site called ‘BBC Footage''. Although some of the credit cards were bogus, having had some of the digits changed, many of the correct names and addresses were cardholders from the UK. A few of the valid transactions were linked to Symantec Corp. For an earlier write-up, please refer to the article entitled: "Fool Symantec? Who's the Fool Here?".
Within a short time Symantec was dragged into the situation. It was found that some of the stolen data was taken from recent credit card transactions for purchasing Symantec software. Anyone with any sense at all should know that Symantec are the wrong people to mess with. It didn't take Symantec long to track the origin to one of their call centers in India. Although, the BBC had only ascertained transactions involving the UK, Symantec has now extended the possibility of as many as 200 credit card accounts in the US. These were clients who'd had interactions with that call center in India about that time.
Thus far, authorities in the UK and eight states in the US have been brought into the case. The call center agent in question has been put on the mat, while that call center has been axed from Symantec's contract. The link has yet to be made between the call center agent and Sachar and it is not yet verified if any of the 200 American credit card account possibilities have resulted in compromise. So far, one New Hampshire resident has been notified of the possibility.
Symantec is taking the protection of its customers even one step further. Even though Symantec has found no evidence that it's American credit card consumers have been compromised, they are offering these customers a full year of identity protection services. The services to be provided by Debix.
And, the BBC? They received instant notoriety for their investigative work but still caught some flack for out-rightly buying the botnet of stolen credit cards from Saurabh.