Mastercard Securecode down

Has anyone else noticed that MasterCard's 3D secure has been down for much of the afternoon? We've lost orders over this, as the 3D secure page times out.

Details here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11935539

 

Great! Not for you obviously...

It's the only way to hold companies like this to account.

 

I saw a message to this effect on our Gateway's website first thing this morning so guess it has been the whole day.

We don't use it luckily.

This is what it says:

Wed 8th Dec 2010 - MasterCard SecureCode unavailable
Merchants who use MasterCard SecureCode (3D Secure) will currently be experiencing issues with this service. This is due to a directory server issue at MasterCard. We will advise as soon as an update has been received from MasterCard. Please note that transactions will still be processed, and that VISA transactions will be wholly unaffected.

 

Their corporate website www.mastercard.com also looks to be down!

 

They were hit by hackers. It's all being linked to WikiLeaks and such.

Personally it shows me that the internet is still not the best place to store your credit card information, if they can bring down MasterCard then they can bring down virtually any other financial website.

 

They are not a almost certainly could not access credit card data.

As I understand it this is a Distributed Denial of Service attack. Basically overloading their server farm with traffic from a very large number of sources to bring down the system.

 

I think the interesting thing here is the precedence these attacks set. It used to be that if you had an issue with someone you went to a rally, rolled a few vans, kicked in some windows and smacked a few riot cops. If a small group of protestors can take down a global payment brand imagine what a large scale protest could do.

Instead of pretesting at city hall we are going to see prtesting by DDOS I think.

 

From MasterCard finally acknowledging the current ongoing issue:

I feel very sorry for many merchants who are for the time being unable to accept Maestro online.

 

Hello, please forgive my dropping in here like this. I'm a journalist at the Guardian looking to speak to one or two online businesses who lost orders as a result of the Mastercard outage yesterday. It would just take 10 minutes on the phone, but I need to speak to you this morning (Thursday). If so, please PM me or call me on 020 3353 4760. Thanks, Graham Snowdon.

 

Graham,

I wasn't affected myself but I have been following your Guardian coverage of this and the whole WikiLeaks saga in twitter and just wanted to say how good I think your coverage is!

Lee

 

www.mastercard.com still seems to be unresponsive. I'd hate to be one of their techies right now!

 

Thanks Lee! Although I can't really take any of the credit myself unfortunately...

Or if you've been affected by Visa or PayPal problems, I should have added on my original post.

 

The problem is not knowing whether or not there has been a problem caused by the hackers.

I have had very few orders since yesterday lunchtime - most unusual - but don't know if it is the hacking to blame or the delivery delays because of snow.......

 

Did not expect to find a Guardian reader here on a business forum, whats the world coming to, be having the Sun readers next

 

Its just the little guy sticking it to THE MAN... problem with that of course is that THE MAN facilitates our way of life, so any attack on him is an indirect attack on all of us.

 

if you have the option have your tryed turning off the 3d secure?

ive not checked with customers but that should in theory stop the failed error being reported back. And get you up and running till this all stops.

TBH i dont see any fast resolution to the issue, i wont go into any details why but what they are doing is so simple that it will only get worse.

 

My orders are well down since yesterday - and had some by cheques was wondering why I was getting cheque orders through have not had them in ages! Very annoying.

 

This just exposes our massive over reliance on a single financial institution. Should this allow that institution to act with total impunity? Should it be above the law or any moral principle. And doesn't this expose the total inequity in these institutions that an attack on them hurts all of the small retailers who rely on it more that it damages that institution itself. In any reasonable society Mastercard would be held responsible for it's lack of service and have to pay the price.

 

For an international view of the fallout for online merchants, please see posts at this board:
webmasterworld.com/ecommerce/4240212.htm