Credit Card Details Hacked

August 30th, 2006: In a throw-back to the days of William Gibson novels and War Games, major U.S. telco' has been hacked, with several thousand customer records compromised.

Using what must be the most transparently awful P.R. spin in recent times, AT&T has admitted that, "fewer than 19,000" customers of its online store have had their credit card records hacked.

According to Reuters, the intrusion and theft of records affects people who purchased ADSL routers from AT&S webstore. The Bloomberg service reports what would appear to be an endemic and dangerous view held in corporate America.

Bloomberg quotes Todd Rethemeier, an analyst at New York-based Soleil Securities "Nineteen thousand customers is a drop in the bucket for AT&T. It's bad for public relations but not significant.''

AT&T's network insecurity can be, and is being dealt with from a technical level. The ambiguity regarding the number of people who have had their details injected into the criminal underworld, will require a corporate rethink as to how individuals are actually affected.

More worryingly from several professional aspects is the analysts view that 19,000 people compose a 'drop in the ocean' in terms of how share price is viewed. Add to this the idea that this sort of horrendous infrastructure flaw is insignificant, and any discussion regarding security and compliance are undermined from the get-go.

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