Cache of 22,000 Credit Cards Discovered by an Australian IT Worker

A cache of 22,000 credit cards was discovered by an Australian IT worker, 19,000 of which are believed to be active cards owned by British and American citizens. The cards included MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Delta, Cirrus, Solo and Switch accounts and the information uncovered included card numbers, names, addresses, expiration dates and security codes.

It’s currently unclear exactly how the accounts were exposed, but the likely culprits include either storage of stolen information or an inactive or improperly secured payment processing center. The discovery was made via Google’s caching feature by a person known as “benjee”,

Benjee apparently was checking out a Google Alert for a name when he came upon the information. Benjee suspected that it might have been a payment processing gateway and he promptly attempted to contact some of the larger credit card companies like American Express and Visa, but had difficulty getting cooperation from the companies. In fact, benjee stated in an online post that he was told contact each issuing institution with the information.

The credit card information has been provided to police and it is believed that an investigation will commence shortly.

Google has put measures in place to block the directory listing for the cache. URLs listed in the directory included UK merchants for clothing, sporting  goods and lab supplies.