WBZ is reporting that hundreds of bank customers are starting their holiday weekend off without their debit cards after a breach at the bank’s card processor, Metavante, forced the Winthrop Federal Credit Union to deactivate some customers’ MasterCards. At least one case of fraud has already been tentatively linked to the breach.

No one was immediately available at Metavante to confirm or clarify the report and there is no statement on their web site. Metavante is listed as PCI-DSS compliant on MasterCard’s listing dated May 19. They are also listed as compliant by Visa as of their May 19th listing, and completed a review this year where TrustWave was the assessor.

This post will be updated as I find out more or as more is reported in the mainstream media.

Update 5-23-09:

WBZ subsequently edited their story without issuing any actual correction to the story or pointing out how their reporting changed. Their most recent version at the same url reports that:

Credit union officials say its card processer (sic), Metavante, noticed suspicious activity on three of its MasterCard debit cards and notified the credit union about them. While it was not a security breach, the Winthrop Federal Credit Union decided to freeze a block of cards as a precaution, something that Metavante did not advise them to do.

Okay, that is significantly different than their original coverage which stated that Metavente had itself had a security breach. Being notified that three cards had suspicious activity on them is radically different than Metavante itself being breached. I wonder if Metavante called the CU after I left a voicemail with Metavante and if they insisted the CU get the story corrected.

Today, the credit union posted this notice on their web site:

Updated Information about your debit card.

WFCU has learned that the debit card situation affecting members’ cards has been resolved. The actual compromised cards have been identified and have resulted in zero dollar losses to the members’ accounts. As a precaution, however, WFCU placed restricted access on a larger block of cards to minimize the potential exposure to our debit card base. We will reissue cards that have had actual compromises immediately and apologize for the inconvenience.

We remind members to always check their accounts, be vigilant in monitoring activity and reconciling your monthly statements. POSTED 5/23/09

So within a few hours we went from the CU claiming that a processor had been breached (if the reporter got the story correctly) to the CU explaining that they had been called about 3 compromised cards and decided to block a much larger group of cards to be safe.

Sheesh.