Fergie's Tech Blog

Feds Identify Overseas Suspect In Heartland Case

Evan Schuman writes on StorefrontBacktalk:

The Secret Service has identified an overseas suspect in the Heartland data breach case and the matter has been turned over to the U.S. Justice Department, according to someone close to the investigation.

Few additional law enforcement details were immediately available, other than that the government believes it has identified the cyber thief involved, has “pinpointed” that suspect’s location and that it’s outside of North America, the source said.

A little more background on the case was also disclosed Friday (Jan. 23) by Heartland itself. The processor first learned of the breach (when alerted by Visa and Mastercard) in late October/early November, said Heartland spokesman Jason Maloni. Previously, the only comment had been that it had been alerted in late Fall, which could have been as late as Dec. 20.

Maloni also revealed that when the sniffer software had been discovered by Heartland, the application had already been deactivated, presumably by the cyber thieves who had planted it. “It was inactive when we found it,” Maloni said.

posted by Fergie @ 1/24/2009 09:27:00 AM