Up to 1.5 million credit card numbers stolen

You may recall how last week there was a report of an undetermined number of credit cards number being stolen in a hack on the payment process company Global Systems. Now that number has been estimated to be as high 1.5 million. The good news is that names, addresses, and social security numbers associated with the card numbers do not appear to have been lifted, making it harder for the bad guys to use the numbers or parlay them into identity theft. The bad news? That a company that processed 120.6 billion dollars in Visa and MasterCard payments in the past year could be hacked in the first place. Global Systems was temporarily suspended by Visa as the result of the hack, MasterCard did not follow Visa’s lead. Today, Global Systems is saying that the problem is contained, which is an expression one often associates with forest fires that have caused enormous damage.