Hacker steals details of 8m credit cards
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Extracted from The Strait Times
Singaporeans are among victims of the global heist this month
By Edna Koh
IF YOU notice something dodgy in your credit card bill, you'd better phone your bank straight away.
You may be a victim of the largest global hacking heist to take place in recent years.
About eight million Visa, Mastercard and other card-holders around the world, including Singapore, had their details stolen by a hacker earlier this month - although the number affected here is believed to be tiny.
News of the hacker attack emerged only on Tuesday.
The computer criminal - who remains at large - breached the security of an American-based company that processes payments, but it is not known if he was an insider job or someone from outside or even overseas.
Nor was it immediately clear if the massive credit card scam targeted victims who shopped over the Internet, or those who used their credit cards for mail order or phone purchases.
In Singapore, Visa cardholders will be relieved to know that if their cards were used to make fraudulent purchases, they will not be liable for them. American Express said none of its customers here was affected, but MasterCard could not confirm the zero-liability clause.
A spokesman for market leader Visa - which notified banks here of the security breach last week - said the number of potentially affected accounts in the Asia-Pacific region was 'miniscule' and particularly so in Singapore.
MasterCard declined to comment on numbers.
Even though not many Singaporeans are said to be affected, four of the six banks who responded to queries by The Straits Times said some of their cardholders had been affected, although they did not give specific figures.
Among them are United Overseas Bank, the largest card issuer here with more than 780,000 cards, OCBC Bank and Maybank.
Although Maybank's card base is relatively small here - something over 100,000 cards - it issues the eCard, which is targeted at the Internet savvy.
A DBS Bank spokesman said that in recent days some customers had approached the bank to cancel their credit cards and to have new ones issued. 'This may have been because of the hacking incident.'
When informed about the breach, UOB and Maybank said they informed affected customers immediately, and blocked the cards.
Asked what recourse Singaporeans have when their card details are wrongfully accessed, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said: 'In an incident of this nature, banks would be expected to take appropriate actions to protect their affected customers and block exploitation of the compromised cards.'
Visa and MasterCard said that worldwide 3.4 million and 2.2 million of their card accounts were affected respectively. But American Express and Discover Financial Services were not spared. -
yours kanna izzit?
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wah, 8 million credit cards is alot, if he takes 1 dollar from each card per day, he is earning $8 million in one day!
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dont know leh. havent receive the recent bill.. too lazy to check online also.Originally posted by Subaru_WRX:yours kanna izzit? 
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hahaha. anson gain tio liao sibo?Originally posted by kohanson:wah, 8 million credit cards is alot, if he takes 1 dollar from each card per day, he is earning $8 million in one day! -
I use to work in a bank dealing with credit card fraud. If you got any doubts, please call your bank's cust service, they can tell you whether anything has been spent recently or what, then u can countercheck.
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how do these hackers do it??
is it because they managed to hack into your computer due to some stuff u downloaded from e.g. kazaa or whatever software sharing program??
i always think that it is dangerous to make online purchases, so many things can happen