Mastercard | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Over a week after Google admitted the company tracks users' location even after they disable location history, it has now been revealed that the tech giant has signed a secret deal with Mastercard that allows it to track what users buy offline. Google has paid Mastercard millions of dollars in exchange to access this information. Neither Google nor Mastercard has publicly announced the business partnership over allowing Google to measure retail spending, though the deal has now been disclosed by Bloomberg. According to four unidentified people with knowledge of the deal cited by the news outlet, Google and Mastercard reached the agreement after a four-year negotiation, wherein all Mastercard transaction data in the U.S. has been encrypted and transmitted to Google. Google packaged the data into a new tool for advertisers, called Store Sales Measurement, and currently being tested the tool with a small group of advertisers, allowing them to track whether online advertise...

MasterCard has unveiled its brand new payment card that has a built-in biometric fingerprint scanner, allowing customers to authorize payments with their fingerprint, without requiring a PIN code or a signature. The company is already testing the new biometric payment cards, combined with the on-board chips, in South Africa and says it hopes to roll out the new cards to the rest of the world by the end of 2017. Don't Worry, It Still Supports PIN-based Transactions as Fallback Wait — If you think that this feature would not allow you to share your card with your child and spouse, don't worry — Mastercard has a solution for this issue as well. The company has confirmed that even if the card is configured to expect the fingerprint for authenticating a purchase, but it does still have a PIN as a fallback, in case, for some reason EMV readers fail to read fingerprint or you have yourself handed it to your child for shopping. Stores & Retailers Don't Need New Hardw...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

Difficulty in remembering complicated Passwords? Forget Passwords and Fingerprints now – and get ready to authenticate your online purchases with your SELFIES . MasterCard is experimenting a new app that would let you make online purchases by taking a selfie rather than typing a password, moving a step forward in the mobile payments evolution. This experimental ID Check security system uses the front camera of your mobile phone and "facial recognition" technology to get your payment done with a quick shot of your face. And MasterCard thinks this generation people will love it. " The new generation, which is into selfies...I think they will find it cool, " MasterCard President of Enterprise Safety and Security Ajay Bhalla told CNNMoney. " They'll embrace it ." How this new feature works? MasterCard will provide you a new mobile app to download in order to use the feature. After you make an online payment, the new app will...

The massive data breaches in U.S retailers ' Target ' and ' Neiman Marcus ', in which financial credentials of more than 110 million and 1.1 million customers were compromised respectively, have put a spotlight on the need for more secure transactions. To tackle this issue, the two major payment card brands, MasterCard and Visa have announced the formation of a new cross-industry group that will focus on the security of the enhancing payment system to keep pace with the expectations of consumers, retailers and financial institutions in the United States. " The recent high-profile breaches have served as a catalyst for much needed collaboration between the retail and financial services industry on the issue of payment security," says Ryan McInerney, president of Visa Inc. "As we have long said, no one industry or technology can solve the issue of payment system fraud on its own. " The joint effort aims to advance the migration to EMV chip cards, also kno...

A U.S. Grand jury indicted and accused 13 members of the hacking group Anonymous for allegedly participating in the cyber attacks against a number of websites as an  anti-copyright campaign called " Operation Payback " Hackers took down the sites by inflicting a denial of service, or DDoS, attack , including those belonging to the Recording Industry Association of America, Visa and MasterCard. The attacks were in retaliation for the shutdown of " The Pirate Bay ," a Sweden-based file-sharing website used to illegally download copyrighted material. The DDoS Campaign was later extended to Bank of America and credit card companies such as Visa and MasterCard after they refused to process payments for WikiLeaks . According to the indictment, the suspects are charged with conspiracy to intentionally cause damage to protected computers. Suspects downloaded and used software known as Low Orbit Ion Cannon , or LOIC, to launch distributed denial-of...

" The truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped ", Edward Snowden.  The National Security Agency isn't just snooping into phone and online communications. It also appears to be keeping a close eye on credit card transactions. New reports published by Der Spiegel exposed that The National Security Agency (NSA) is widely monitoring SWIFT bank transactions, International Credit Card Payments and banking, attained by watching printer traffic from numerous banks. According to the information acquired by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden , Show that in 2011, the NSA possessed 180 million records and spying is conducted by a branch called " Follow the Money. That data then moved to their own   ' Tracfin ' financial databank to track money flows. NSA targets the transactions of various banks via large credit card companies like VISA by doing surveillance in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Some 84 percent of the data are from credit card transactions...

On tip of a readers, yesterday we came across a new MasterCard hack, performed by  Syrian Electronic Army . Hackers was able to breach MasterCard Blog ( https://insights.mastercard.com ) and make a new blog post on the website with title " Hacked By Syrian Electronic Army " on January 5, 2013. For now MasterCard deleted that post, but readers can check Google cache . Today we tried to contact the hacker, but may be they are busy in Hacking Next Target , I started my investigation that how they can hack such a big economic website's blog. Starting from very first step, Information gathering about your target. Simple by reviewing the source code we found that MasterCard blog is using Wordpress. We all know, WordPress is particular a popular attack vector for cyber criminals. To know this, I just tried to access the readme.html file of CMS , that's it - MasterCard #fail ! They are using an old  Wordpress 3.3.2  version, in...

Dutch media report   Skype has Illegally (without court order) distributed a 16 years old user's personal information including user name, real name, email addresses and the home address used for payment to a private company consistently a police investigation into Anonymous-sanctioned cyber attacks on PayPal.  In 2011 most of the online payment solution companies blocked donations to WikiLeaks, in relation to this Anonymous Hacker DDOS paypal and Mastercard. During investigation of attack an IT firm reach skype for the information of their use and Skype  handed over the personal information of a 16-year-old  Illegally to them. Dutch media report that Police operating the case as 'Operation Talang' which is actually focussed on two persons. Joep Gommers, senior director of global research at the Dutch IT security firm iSIGHT Partners, was hired by PayPal to investigate the attacks. They are Alleged to...

Dutch authorities announced the arrest of a 16-year-old hacker involved in the pro-WikiLeaks attacks on the websites of MasterCard and PayPal. The Dutch National Prosecutors Office reported that the teen, whose name was not disclosed, was arrested by a high-tech crime team last night. The arrest follows a series of attacks organized by the group known as Anonymous. This group has previously targeted entities such as the Church of Scientology and the Australian government. Recently, they launched distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on companies distancing themselves from WikiLeaks. These attacks use thousands of computers to overwhelm a target by making simultaneous connections. Yesterday, Visa.com was briefly taken offline, though the company assured CNET that no payments or transactions were affected. MasterCard.com was also unreachable in the morning. Additionally, the website for the Swedish prosecution agency, which is seeking the extradition of WikiLeaks editor Julian A...

Hackers rushed to defend WikiLeaks on Wednesday, launching attacks on MasterCard, Visa, Swedish prosecutors, a Swiss bank, and others who acted against the site and its jailed founder, Julian Assange. Internet "hacktivists" under the banner "Operation Payback" claimed responsibility in a Twitter message for causing severe technological problems on MasterCard's website. MasterCard had recently severed ties with WikiLeaks. Although MasterCard acknowledged a disruption in its Secure Code system for verifying online payments, spokesman James Issokson assured that consumers could still use their credit cards securely. Later on Wednesday, Visa's website also became inaccessible. These online attacks are part of a broader wave of support for WikiLeaks sweeping the Internet. Twitter was flooded with messages of solidarity for the group, while its Facebook page reached 1 million fans. However, late Wednesday, Operation Payback itself faced difficulties as many of i...