Security Leak Reveals Weaknesses In Credit Card Processing System

A criminal exploit that exposed 40 million credit card accounts to possible fraud has revealed weaknesses in the system - the hundreds of companies involved in the processing transactions between merchants and card issuers:

"Information travels through the credit system and stops in so many places where it could be illegally used that consumers have no idea what a hodgepodge of a system the credit card companies have created," said Edmund Mierzwinski, consumer program director at U.S. Public Interest Research Group. That system, he said, is mainly designed to extract fees from consumers and businesses, "but very little of it is designed for security."

The breach occurred after CardSystems inappropriately held onto card data for "research purposes" rather than deleting it. Forty million accounts were exposed, and records pertaining to at least 200,000 are known to have been stolen, primarily MasterCard and Visa cards.

Information Week