Recently, the media has reported that an identity thief, said to be associated with the largest case of identity theft to date, has been caught. Albert Gonzalez, 28, ran an operation in which he hacked into over 100 million credit card accounts. Gonzalez (residing in Miami, FL) was charged on Monday for credit and debit card theft. He is reported to have stolen 40 million card numbers in the past, so this is at least his second offense. He was able to obtain the numbers by hacking into retail store computer networks. If convicted, Gonzalez faces up to 20 years in prison. Gonzalez was involved in the following data breaches (reported earlier): Heartland Payment Systems; 7-Eleven Inc, TJX Companies, Dave & Busters, BJ’s Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, Forever 21, DSW and others. There are also unidentified company breaches that Gonzalez, and his conspirators, were involved with.

Gonzalez formerly worked for the US Secret Service to help hunt for computer hackers. He is being charged along with two others (not yet named) for stealing private information.

According to the Associated Press, these hackers used software that secretly monitored communications and led them to computers where the actual card transactions occur. They then could install software on those computers to monitor actual credit or debit card transactions. It is reported that this is bound to happen again and that although the credit card processor Heartland has taken measures to make their network more secure, many other processors have not and are still vulnerable to this type of criminal cyber-hacking.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 20th, 2009 at 12:34 pm and is filed under Data Breach. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.