VentureBeat

Heartland Payment Systems said today that hackers may have compromised more than 100 million credit card accounts last year in what could be the biggest ever data breach.

The New Jersey company is one of the largest credit and debit card processing services in the country. It said that unknown cyberthieves planted malicious software on its computers last year and stole credit card data stored on the company’s networks. The company says it only learned of the breach last week after warnings from Visa and Mastercard.

Let’s see now. The odds are probably pretty darn good that your identity has been stolen.

Robert Baldwin Jr., Heartland’s president and chief financial officer said the intrusion could be part of a “widespread global cyberfraud operation.” The company itself had no estimate on the numbers of cards stolen, but it did say that it processes more than 100 million transactions in a month.

The company said that no merchant data, cardholder Social Security numbers, or PIN numbers were stolen. But Heartland offered few other details on the breach. In 2007, TJX, the operator of TJ Maxx stores, had its security breached and thieves stole data on more than 45 million cards.

The company plans to disclose more information on the data breach at the web site www.2008breach.com. The company apologized “for the inconvenience” and said it had upgraded its security measures. It says it is adopting a next-generation program to flag network anomalies in real time. Too bad they weren’t so diligent about data protection a year ago. But then, it seems that very few big companies are successful in protecting themselves against cybercrime.

[photo: Leggnet on Flickr]

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Tags: co:heartland-payment-systems