Spike In Fraudulant Sales This Past Weekend
Authorize.net, the most popular payment gateway provider, announced that it saw a spike in fraudulent transactions pass through its systems this past weekend. The transactions, which ranged from $500 – $700, were billed to all major credit cards for users across the country.
All of the fraudulent transactions were processed through web hosting companies that use the Authorize.net payment gateway services. The hackers who did this apparently stole quality credit card data and used security holes in the web hosts’ systems to run the sales. The money for these transaction were sent to the webhosts. The hackers used the sales to verify whether the credit cards were valid. With the transactions being successful they are expected to use them in other fraudulent transactions very soon.
The web hosts and Authorize.net are at odds over where the security breach occurred. The web hosts are blaming Authorize.net. Authorize.net claims it cannot be there services fault as they just act like a credit card terminal and the blame as to be on the hosts for using flawed software.
On Sunday about 1,500 transaction were run through in a 90 minute period early Sunday morning totaling just under $1 million to one account! A total of three webhosts were used in this attack. In all cases the information put through the system included a valid credit card number, expiration date, cardholder name, and cardholder address. The successful transactions proves all of the information is accurate and correct.