credit card hacking | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

This week, three high-profile data breaches took place, compromising personal and sensitive details of millions of people. Telecommunication giant T-Mobile Crowdfunding website Patreon US brokerage firm Scottrade In T-Mobile's case, its credit application processor Experian was hacked , potentially exposing highly sensitive details of 15 Million people who applied for its service in the past two years. The stolen data includes home addresses, birth dates, driver's license number, passport number, military I.D. numbers and – most unfortunately – the Social Security numbers, among other information. Patreon Hack Hits 2.3 Million Users In Patreon's case, hackers managed to steal almost 15 gigabytes' worth of data including names, shipping addresses and email addresses of 2.3 Million users . In a post published late Wednesday, Patreon CEO Jack Conte confirmed that the crowdfunding firm had been hacked and that the personal data of its users h...

If your Social Security number gets hacked in any data breaches, including recently hacked T-Mobile , then there's a way to prevent hackers from misusing your identity (i.e. identity theft ). The solution here is that you can institute a security freeze at each of the three credit bureaus, Equifax , Experian , or TransUnion . Once frozen, nobody will be allowed to access your credit report, which will prevent any identity thieves from opening new accounts in your name. Because most creditors required to see your credit report before approving a new account. But, if they are restricted to see your file, they may not extend the credit or open a new account in your name. However, there are some disadvantages of doing so. 1.   Cost The cost of a security freeze differs by state (check yours here ). However, it is often free for already affected people, but the issue is – if you want to let anyone check your credit, you will need to pay a fee every time to ...

If you applied for financing from T-Mobile anytime between 1 September 2013 and 16 September 2015, you have been HACKED! – even if you never had T-Mobile service. T-Mobile's credit application processor Experian was hacked, potentially exposing the highly personal information of more than 15 million people in the United States. The stolen information includes names, addresses, phone numbers and – most unfortunately – Social Security numbers . The massive data breach was first discovered in mid-September and has now been confirmed by T-Mobile CEO John Legere . According to Legere, Hackers successfully obtained Millions of people's private information through Experian, one of the world's largest credit check companies that process T-Mobile's credit applications. Both customers and people who submitted to a T-Mobile credit check ( but either canceled or never activated their T-Mobile service ) between September 1, 2013, and September 16, 2015, are most at ris...

October 1 Liability shift ENDS! Today, 1st October 2015 , is the deadline for US-based Banks and Retailers to roll out Chip-embedded Credit Cards ( powered by EVM Technology ) to customers that will make transactions more secure. EVM Technology stands for Europay , MasterCard and Visa -- a global standard for Payment Cards equipped with Chips used to authenticate chip card transactions. Starting Thursday, Merchants must have new Payment Terminals installed to accept Chip Cards in their stores or restaurants. Otherwise, they will be responsible for credit card frauds. Stephanie Ericksen, Visa's Vice President Risk Products said, " That's the date by which if a merchant doesn't have a chip terminal, and a counterfeit card is used at that location, they may be liable for that fraud on that transaction. '' 60% Customers Still have Old Credit Cards However, If you have not received a new credit card with chip technology, don't worry, ...

Hackers are increasingly exploiting an unknown flaw to siphon payment card information from e-commerce websites that use Magento , the most popular e-commerce platform owned by eBay. Security researchers at Sucuri are still investigating the attack vector, but they believe that cyber criminals are injecting malicious code into the Magento core file or some widely used module/extension in order to steal payment card data. Back in April, a critical Remote Code Execution Flaw in Magento allowed hackers to fully compromise any online store powered by Magento and thereby gain access to credit card data and other financial, and personal information related to the customers. Credit Card Stealers? Now, Sucuri senior malware researcher Peter Gramantik have found an attack script that pilfers the content of every POST request and identifies valuable payment card data before storing it in an encrypted form that only the attacker can decrypt. Moreover, to evade detection,...

Today anywhere you go, you will come across Free or Public WiFi hotspots -- it makes our travel easier when we stuck without a data connection. Isn't it? But, I think you'll agree with me when I say: This Free WiFi hotspot service could bring you in trouble, as it could be a bait set up by hackers or cyber criminals to get access to devices that connects to the free network. This is why mobile device manufacturers provide an option in their phone settings so that the device do not automatically connects to any unknown hotspot and asks the owner for approval every time it comes across a compatible WiFi. Hackers can grab your Credit Card Data. Here's How? Recently, security researchers from mobile security company ' Wandera ' have alerted Apple users about a potential security flaw in iOS mobile operating system that could be exploited by hackers to set up a rogue WiFi spot and then fool users into giving up their personal information, including credit card details. The l...

A new and terribly awful breed of Point-of-Sale (POS) malware has been spotted in the wild by the security researchers at Cisco's Talos Security Intelligence & Research Group that the team says is more sophisticated and nasty than previously seen Point of Sale malware. The Point-of-Sale malware, dubbed " PoSeidon ", is designed in a way that it has the capabilities of both the infamous Zeus banking Trojan and BlackPOS malware which robbed Millions from US giant retailers, Target in 2013 and Home Depot in 2014. PoSeidon malware scrapes memory from Point of Sale terminals to search for card number sequences of principal card issuers like Visa, MasterCard, AMEX and Discover, and goes on using the Luhn algorithm to verify that credit or debit card numbers are valid. The malware then siphon the captured credit card data off to Russian (.ru) domains for harvesting and likely resale, the researchers say. "PoSeidon is another in the growing number ...

Despite anti-skimmer ATM Lobby access control system available in the market, we have seen a number of incidents in recent years where criminals used card skimmers at ATM doors. Few years back, cyber criminals started using card skimmers on the door of the ATM vestibule , where customers have to slide their credit or debit cards to gain access to the ATM. The typical ATM Skimming devices are used by fraudsters capture both magnetic stripe data contained on the back of a debit or credit card as well as the PIN number that is entered by the customer when using the ATM. In recent case discussed by Brian, cyber criminal installed the card skimming device on the ATM Lobby Card Access Control and a pinhole hidden camera pointed at the ATM's keyboard. Basically, it's an ATM skimmer that requires no modification to the ATM. The card skimmer hidden on the ATM door records the debit and credit card information , and the pinhole camera records the PIN number the ...

Banks have tried every effort, from providing Magnetic Stripes based Credit and Debit Cards to Chip-and-Pin Cards , in order to secure its users from credit card cloning and card Skimmers. It has been known from years that Magnetic stripe are incredibly hackable, but  Chip-n-Pin cards have also been hacked and successfully cloned by a group of security researchers. A unit of Canada's Bank of Montreal, BMO Harris Bank is  launching  the U.S.'s biggest cardless ATM network that allows its customers to withdraw cash within seconds, using nothing but their smartphones. NO CARD, NO PIN, JUST YOUR SMARTPHONE According to the bank, there is no need to enter PIN and instead of swiping the card, customers have to sign into mobile banking app " Mobile Cash ", hold their smartphones over the QR code on the ATM screen and the cash gets delivered. This cardless cash withdrawal technology will boost security, speed up transactions and reduce frauds because no card...

If you are a traveler and loves to travel then you must be annoyed of those calls you sometimes get from your bank when buying things far from home, and the most annoyed part is when the company won't approve the transaction as it fears your card was stolen. VISA MOBILE LOCATION CONFIRMATION APP The payment processing and credit card giant Visa has came forward to put an end to this problem by letting cardholders the chance to buy things wherever they are. The company plans to release a new location-based feature that will help cardholders to update their location via smartphone. Starting in April, the banks will include the software application, dubbed Visa Mobile Location Confirmation , in their smartphone apps. The app will use cardholders smartphone's ability to locate itself and verify that they're near where the card is being used. IN WAKE OF INCREASING CREDIT CARD FRAUD The idea behind this new move is to reduce the rising incidents of credit card fraud and fraud...

Barrett Brown , a journalist formerly served as an unofficial spokesman for the hacktivist collective Anonymous , was sentenced Thursday to over five years in prison, after pleading guilty to federal charges of  " transmitting a threat in interstate commerce ,"   " for interfering with the execution of a search warrant ," and to being " accessory after the fact in the unauthorized access to a protected computer ." After already having served over 2 years ( 31 months ) in detention, Texas court in Dallas has sentenced Barrett Brown to 63 months in federal prison and also ordered him to pay a little more than $890,000 in restitution and fines related to the 2011 hack of Stratfor Global Intelligence . Over a year ago, another federal judge sentenced Anonymous member Jeremy Hammond to 10 years in prison for making millions of emails from the servers of security firm Stratfor public. It's Hammond who said that Brown simply linked to the hacked ...

Hackers claiming affiliation with the hacktivist group "Anonymous" have allegedly leaked more than 13,000 username and password combinations for some of the worlds most popular websites, including Amazon, Xbox Live and Playstation Network . The stolen personal information was released in a massive text document posted to the Internet file-sharing website Ghostbin  (now deleted) , on Friday. The document contains a huge number of usernames and passwords, along with credit card numbers and expiration dates. The news came just a day after the hacker group Lizard Squad compromised Sony's Playstation and Microsoft's Xbox Live gaming networks on Christmas day, which is estimated to have affected Xbox's 48 million subscribers and PlayStation's 110 million users, making it a total of more than 150 million users worldwide. However, data breach of 13,000 users is not the biggest data breach we've ever seen. When millions of passwords are used for sites ar...

Credit card frauds are very common these days – today a data breach occurs in retailer's shop, online shopping site or banking site and at the next moment millions of cards appears in the underground black market – how simple is that for cyber criminals nowadays. But imagine if there is no possible way to hack credit cards and ID cards. Seems like next to impossible, but quantum cryptography ensures that stealing people's personal data will soon be very difficult for hackers and cyber thieves due to an extra layer of verification. SECURE FRAUD-PROOF CREDIT CARDS The research at the University of Twente in Enschede, Netherlands has suggested that " fraud-proof " credit cards are possible to develop using Quantum Physics that will protect users' financial and personal information from hackers. Security researchers describe this extra layer of verification as Quantum-Secure Authentication (QSA) of a " classical multiple-scattering key ." With the...

Security researchers from Newcastle University in the UK have found a way to steal larger amounts of money from people's pockets using just a mobile phone, due to a security glitch Visa's contactless payment cards. Contactless payment cards use a cryptoprocessor and RFID technology to perform secure transactions without a need to insert the card in a reader, even an NFC-equipped mobile device may also be used as a payment card. But there is a specified limits country-wise. Contactless payment cards are meant to have a limit of £20 per purchase in UK, using which shoppers can buy things by simply tapping their card on a scanner, without having to type in a PIN. But exploiting a flaw in its protocol could allow cyber criminals to manipulate the cards to transfer up to $999,999.99 in foreign currency into a scammer's account. Researchers on Wednesday at the 21st ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, detailed the attack which rely on a "rogue POS te...

TripAdvisor's  Online travel booking and review website  Viator  has reportedly been hit by a massive data breach at its  that may have exposed payment card details and account credentials of its customers, affecting an estimated 1.4 million of its customers. The San Francisco-based Viator, acquired by TripAdvisor – the world's largest travel site – for £122 million ( US$ 200 million ) back in July, admitted late on Friday that the intruders have hacked into some of its customers' payment card accounts and made unauthorized charges. The data breach was discovered in the bookings made through Viator's websites and mobile offerings that could potentially affect payment card data. Viator said that the company has hired forensic experts to figure out the extent of the breach. Meanwhile, the company has begun notifying its affected customers about the security breach as said by the travel outfit in a press release . " On September 2, we were info...

Home Depot , the nation's largest home improvement retailer, announced on Thursday that a total of 56 million unique payment cards were likely compromised in a data breach at its stores, suggesting that the data breach on Home improvement chain was larger than the Target data breach that occurred last year during Christmas holidays. The data theft occurred between April and September at Home Depot stores in both the United States and Canada, but the confirmation comes less than a week after the retailer first disclosed the possibility of a breach. " We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and anxiety this has caused, and want to reassure them that they will not be liable for fraudulent charges, " Home Depot CEO Frank Blake said in a statement. " From the time this investigation began, our guiding principle has been to put our customers first, and we will continue to do so. " It is believe that the cybercriminals successfully compromised the...

At the beginning of this month, just like other social networks, Twitter also started paying individuals for any flaws they uncover on its service with a fee of $140 or more offered per flaw under its new Bug Bounty program, and here comes the claimant. An Egyptian Security Researcher, Ahmed Mohamed Hassan Aboul-Ela , who have been rewarded by many reputed and popular technology giants including Google, Microsoft and Apple, have discovered a critical vulnerability in Twitter's advertising service that allowed him deleting credit cards from any Twitter account. FIRST VULNERABILITY Initially, Aboul-Ela found two different vulnerabilities in ads.twitter.com, but both the flaws was having the " same effect and impact. " First flaw exists in the Delete function of credit cards in payments method page, https://ads.twitter.com/accounts/[account id]/payment_methods By choosing the Delete this card function, an ajax POST request is sent to the server. The post parameter...

Due to the better track inventory and accuracy of records, Point-of-sale (POS) systems are being used in most of the industries including restaurants, lodging, entertainment, and museums around the world. It can be easily set-up depending on the nature of the business. Despite that, Point-of-sale (POS) systems are critical components in any retail environment and users are not aware of the emerging threats it poses in near future. So, it is one of the apparent target for cybercriminals and the recent security breach at Information Systems & Suppliers (ISS) proves this. Information Systems & Suppliers (ISS) Inc., the vendor of point-of-sale (POS) electronic cash registers and security systems used by restaurants has warned its customers that it may have experienced a payment card breach. HACKERS COMPROMISED VENDOR'S LogMeIn SERVICE The company on June 12 notified restaurant customers of its remote-access service, the popular LogMeIn, had been compromi...