Global Payments, one of the world's largest payment processing firms, experienced a large data breach that has potentially left credit card accounts from all major brands vulnerable.
The company made a statement on Friday, March 30 in which it confirmed that "card data may have been accessed" during a break-in from earlier in the month. Global Payments did not confirm how many accounts were compromised, or which credit card brands were affected.
However, VISA released a statement saying that it was all the major brands. And Krebs on Security, a security blog that first reported on the breach said that it was "massive" and that as many as 10 million credit cards could be affected.
VISA and MasterCard have started alerting the customers whose accounts may be at risk.
Payment processing firms like Global Payments are the middlemen between the stores and the credit card companies. When you swipe your credit card at a store, the information goes to to the payment processing firm and is then send to the credit card companies.
[via CNN]
