Hack at MasterCard and Visa is probably a hoax

It is not entirely clear where the stolen credit card details that appeared on the internet Monday came from. In addition, it appears that the “hacker” who published the data is not behind the hack at all.

There is a good chance that the “credit card details” published Monday did not come from the hacker named Reckz0r. As tweaker Johny_B argues, the data was already published on a Palestinian hacker site at the beginning of May. Chances are, therefore, that ‘hacker’ Reckz0r simply copied the data and published it as his own work.

The ‘Attacker’ claims moreover, suddenly not having cracked Visa and MasterCard, but the banks. He allegedly had access to 79 major banks in the past three months had, including US giant Chase. He previously stated that he had stolen 50GB of data from the credit card companies Visa and MasterCard.

Reckz0r published some of the stolen data on Monday, but doubts quickly arose about the origin of the data. The list also included data from customers of credit card company American Express, a competitor of Visa and MasterCard. There’s no reason the latter two companies should have American Express customer data.

It seems more likely that the data comes from another source, also because the list does not contain any credit card numbers or related data, such as the security code and the expiration date. According to the hacker himself, he would have omitted that information to protect the privacy of the customers, but at the same time he did publish e-mail addresses and telephone numbers.