NEW YORK – Visa and MasterCard are warning credit unions and banks this morning of a large-scale data breach that affected a credit card processor from the US sometime between January 21, and February 25.
The new breach may have compromised more than 10 million credit cards and the data may be used to counterfeit new cards. Preliminary analysis of the incident showed that a single firm that provides online financial services to credit unions alerted 482 institutions, which may have a total of 56,455 impacted accounts.
Alerts were sent out to US credit unions and banks late last week and the affected card issuers are analyzing data transactions in a bid to track a common point of purchase. Several credit unions have been blocking cards over the past few days in response.
On Wednesday, PSCU said it alerted 482 credit unions that appear to have had cards impacted by the breach, and that a total of 56,455 member VISA and MasterCard accounts were compromised. PSCU said fraudulent activity had been detected on a relatively small number of those cards — 876 accounts — and that the activity was geographically dispersed.
The name of the processor was not made public, but the financial organizations which investigated the unfortunate event revealed that many of the credit cards were used in parking garages in the New York City area.
Law enforcement has been notified of the matter and an "independent data security organization" is conducting an ongoing forensic review of the matter.
