MasterCard Blames Temporary Outage on ISP, Not Hackers
Hackers are trying to take credit for bringing down MasterCard's website yesterday, a plausible claim given the recent hackathon that's been sweeping through cyberspace. However, the world's second largest consumer payment network blamed the temporary downtime on its telecommunications service provider, while insisting that no card user accounts are in jeopardy.
"We can confirm that MasterCard's corporate, public-facing website experienced intermittent service disruption, due to a telecommunications/Internet Service Provider outage that impacted multiple users," MasterCard spokesperson James Issokson told MSNBC.com. In an earlier statement, Issokson ensured, "It is important to note that no cardholder data has been impacted and that cardholders can continue to use their cards securely."
On Twitter, hacking group "Ibom Hactivist" tried to take credit for bringing down MasterCard.com and tweeted, "MasterCard.com DOWN!!!, thats what you get when you mess with @wikileaks @Anon_Central and enter community of lulz loving individuals :D" The tweet references two high-profile hacking groups, including Anonymous and Lulz Security, the latter of which recently disbanded.
