Just when you thought it was safe to get back into the water

MasterCard has confirmed that a hacker got into the systems of Cardsystems Solutions and stole 40 million credit card numbers. Cardsystems Solutions is MasterCard’s Atlanta-based payment processor partner. Now the blame has finally come down onto Microsoft because Cardsystem Solutions had its systems running on Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system and IIS Server 5.0. What we are seeing here is how the blame is being pushed from company to company. The way I see it, MasterCard should be blamed for being irresponsible enough to have a partner like Cardsystems Solutions and Cardsystems Solutions should be blamed for not using the right patches or upgrading their software and also not storing the transaction data in encrypted form !. MasterCard does not have the details of the credit card numbers that have been compromised so if you have not been notified, don’t think you are safe. Keep an eye on your card transactions and contact your bank if you find irregular activity on your card. Hmmm, I can see the tagline in their next TV ad, ‘There are some things hackers can’t steal, for everything else, there’s MasterCard.’