Heartland pays US$3.6 million to AmEx in first settlement since 2008 data theft

As a part of the legal settlement Heartland Payment Systems is to pay US$3.6 million in charges to American Express. The fine is related to the 2008 hacking of Heartland’s data network. It is the first case settled by the payment processor since the hackers’ attack was disclosed in January this year.

Earlier, the Department of Justice charged Albert Gonzalez and several other accomplices with the hack saying that Heartland was one of several companies that the hackers managed to break into using SQL injection attacks.

Apart from Heartland the crooks attacked 7-Eleven and Hannaford Brothers. The overall number of the hacked credit cards accounts for 130 million from Heartland and about 4.2 million from Hannaford.

As a result card issuers including American Express had to pay the costs of re-issuing credit cards, following the breach, and many banks have sued Heartland to recover these costs.