20 June 2005
MasterCard International has warned that a security breach could have made more than 40 million credit cards vulnerable to fraud.
In addition, the breach affects credit cards other than MasterCard, such as Visa, American Express or Discover cards also at risk.
MasterCard was keen to emphasise that only 68,000 of its accounts were thought to be at significant risk from fraud.
The compromised data included card holder names, account numbers, security codes and expiry dates.
A spokeswoman for MasterCard said a hacker used a special computer code to get the information, when security at CardSystems Solutions, a payment processing company in Tucson, Arizona, was breached in May.
The FBI is investigating the breach, and new systems are being put in place to prevent a reoccurrence.
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