Bernard Orsman has more on what appears to be a significant breach in New Zealand that may have affected over 100,000:
A banking investigation has raised the possibility that stolen credit card details of tens of thousands of New Zealanders are in the hands of a Russian or Albanian gang.
The theft of credit card details from payment machines at the Downtown carpark in central Auckland had all the hallmarks of a Russian or Albanian hacking ring preying on soft targets, a source close to the investigation told the Herald.
The investigation is being conducted by Westpac Bank, with the help of the Auckland City Council, which owns and operates the 1970-space Downtown carpark.
The source said the gang was believed to be based in the United States, but probably masked its identity by using internet addresses in other countries.
[…]
But the Herald source believes the gang used a more sophisticated form of credit card theft, called spoofing, in which criminals forge an internet address to conceal their identity and sniff the internet for targets they can break into and steal information.
[…]
Westpac and other banks, Mastercard and Visa have refused to reveal the scale of the problem.
The banks are scrambling to replace the credit and debit cards of anyone who has used the Downtown carpark. More than 100,000 cards are believed to be affected.
Westpac is refusing to say how long the scam ran, but a source in the finance industry said it was possibly years
Read more in the New Zealand Herald.
Photo credit: Signage with a real car!! by Lynda W1, Flickr, used under Creative Commons license