Fergie's Tech Blog

Hannaford Breach Raises New Fears

An AP newswire article, via CNBC.com, reports that:

At first, it sounded like another in a long line of credit card breaches: Up to 4.2 million account numbers were stolen by thieves who cracked computers at Hannaford Bros. Co., an Eastern supermarket chain.

But the specifics of the crime, revealed this week, included some troubling twists that might expose big holes in the payment industry's security standards.

For one thing, Hannaford said this sensitive data were exposed when shoppers swiped their cards at checkout line machines and the information was transmitted to banks for approval.

While thieves have commonly pilfered payment card data sitting in databases maintained by merchants or card processors, the Hannaford episode appears to represent a new line of attack: the first large-scale piracy of card data while the information was in transit.

posted by Fergie @ 3/20/2008 01:47:00 PM