8000 Credit Cards' Details Compromised In Australian Bank Breach 54
mask.of.sanity writes "Australia's largest bank, the Commonwealth Bank, has cancelled 8,000 credit cards after it detected a data breach at a merchant. Mastercard and Visa may issue penalties including fines to the acquiring bank under the payment industry's PCI-DSS compliance rules. News of breaches is uncommon in Australia because the nation does not have data breach disclosure laws."
Anti-CBA spin? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get why so many stories are spinning this as though it's somehow CBA's fault. CBA detected the data breach, alerted the public, and cancelled affected cards. They failed to name and shame the company that suffered the breach, only indicating that it was a bank outside Australia. CBA deserves some credit for handling the situation as well as they could.
Re:Anti-CBA spin? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what I thought too. Even the statement about disclosure laws is out of place,as the laws that would apply are the laws in the country where the issuing bank and/or retailer is based.
CBA probably couldn't reveal the bank or retailer either, as they would probably end up fighting a defamation lawsuit.
the only reason this is news (Score:2, Insightful)
the awful behaviour of banks in the US that go to extreme lengths to blame the credit card holder
here we have a bank outside the US that should be a decent example of what banks should do
- tell your customers that their cards no longer work and why
- priority issue them new cards as they may be reliant on the credit cards
- don't name who screwed the pooch. customers can contact the bank if they want more info
- the bank absorbs the cost of the fraudulent transactions (kept low by picking up on the activity early)
the actual story here is a bank (not cba) was requesting transactions into a merchant account
the commonwealth bank analysis software detected something very suspicious with the transactions
it subsequently cancelled all associated credit cards being used preventing further fraudulent transfers
it immediately generated new cards to issue those who were affected
it's unknown if other banks have detected similar transactions on their customers cards
frankly this could be a side effect of the psn breach for all we know
it might just be that other banks haven't detected / admitted the customers cards have been compromised