Global Payments Breach: Big Authentication Lessons

Weaknesses in knowledge-based authentication and mag-stripe are highlighted in security experts examination of the breach that affected credit card customers.

Anonymous: 10 Facts About The Hacktivist Group (click image for larger view and for slideshow)
In spite of a Monday morning media conference call, details about the
Global Payments breach
that broke late last Friday remain sparse this week, but that hasnt stopped the security community from speculating about the potential lessons we might learn from this latest mega breach. Though the conjecture covers numerous angles, the thematic elements tend to converge on authentication: both at the administrator account level where many of these breaches occur, and at the card-holder level when transactions are processed.
According to a conference call early on Monday, Paul Garcia, Global Payments CEO and chairman, reported that early forensics reports from his company show the breach affected Track 2 data from approximately 1.5 million cardholders. He also claims only a small number of Global Payments servers were affected by the breach.
Beyond these few explanations, though, the details from the call were incredibly light and Global Payments did not field media questions following the call.
He said none of their merchant systems were compromised. Well, then what was compromised? asked Avivah Litan, VP and distinguished analyst for Gartner Research, venting her frustrations about the lack of details from Garcia. Why do you tell us what didnt happen? Tell us what did happen.
According to Litan, her confidential sources tell her a Central American gang broke into the companys system by answering the applications knowledge-based authentication questions correctly. At the same time, other sources told her that over the past few days that a yet-to-be-disclosed breach at a big New York-area taxi cab company could have had connections to the Global Payments breach. She also pointed to reports from Brian Krebs of KrebsOnSecurity.com, who first broke the story and who today mentioned that the company that hosts Global Payments website recently switched to Amazon EC2 and also that hed been contacted by a hacker who claimed Global Payments end-to-end encryption was circumvented by an inside source.
Read the rest of this article on
Dark Reading
.
As businesses rely increasingly on tablets for the productivity benefits they provide, IT must address the security challenges the devices present. Find out more in our
Security Pros Guide To Tablet PCs
report. (Free registration required.)

Last News
▸ ArcSight prepares for future at user conference post HP acquisition. ◂ Discovered: 07/01/2025 Category: security	▸ Samsung Epic 4G: First To Use Media Hub ◂ Discovered: 07/01/2025 Category: security	▸ Many third-party software fails security tests ◂ Discovered: 07/01/2025 Category: security

**Cyber Security Categories**
Google Dorks Database	Exploits Vulnerability	Exploit Shellcodes

CVE List

Tools/Apps

News/Aarticles

Phishing Database

Deepfake Detection

Trends/Statistics & Live Infos

Tags:
Global Payments Breach: Big Authentication Lessons