CardSystems Data Breach (2005)

Breach at payment processor affects 22 million Visa cards and 14 million MasterCard cards. "It looks like a hacker gained access to CardSystems' database and installed a script that acts like a virus, searching out certain types of card transaction data," said MasterCard spokeswoman Jessica Antle. As of Monday, MasterCard and CardSystems said that of the more than 40 million accounts exposed, information on only 68,000 Mastercard accounts, 100,000 Visa accounts and 30,000 accounts from other card brands are known to have been exported by the hackers. The data exported included names, card numbers and card security codes. MasterCard and CardSystems have offered differing explanations of how the data breach was uncovered. MasterCard said its fraud monitoring system identified a series of fraudulent transactions in April. Then, with the help of a member bank, traced the problem to CardSystems Solutions. CardSystems, meanwhile, said in a statement it identified a potential security incident on Sunday, May 22nd and notified the FBI the next day, and Visa and Mastercard after that.