March 23, 2009
-
News: The Cached Cash Cache.
Leave it to the ‘Land Down Under' to come up with the discoveries. Although not really a new discovery (has been known by IT experts for a few years now), this recent discovery is the breaking news. Mr. anonymous Aussi happened to discover the back door (web cache) of a presumed now-defunct third-party credit card processor. The discovery could have proven to be a treasure-trove to someone of less integrity then this honest person. Through this discovery, between 19,000 and 22,000 credit card numbers were found. The trove was replete with all the ‘good stuff' that thieves and fraudsters cherish the most. Among the find were not only the PANs (actual credit card numbers) but, also, CVVs, Exp.Dates, Cardholder Names and Addresses.
This much sensitive credit card data makes it very easy for a fraudster to do his worst deeds. It also makes the information that more valuable on the credit card black market. It's probably a foregone conclusion, however, that this ‘portal' has been known by the thieves for years now and they just haven't gotten around to reporting it to authorities.
The good news is that, now it's being fixed by the authorities and those exposed credit cards will no longer be ‘in service'. They were mostly from the major variety like VISA, MC, AMEX and debit card interchangers like Cirrus. About 19,000 of the 22,000 credit cards were believed to be still active accounts. Most were from Britain and the US although, as many as 60 could have been registered in Australia. Because the incident has just come to light, further details are scant at this point. The authorities have taken control of the situation and, even the website where the article first appeared (Threadbare). AMEX has already fixed their part of it. No word from the other associations yet, though.