It was revealed Friday that hackers had hit the credit card payment processor Global Payments, and stolen potentially millions of Mastercard and Visa customer details in January and February. But on Sunday, Global Payments said in a press release that actually "less than 1,500,000 card numbers may have been exported." Heh, exported—like a fine, fraudulent wine.
At a press conference this morning, Julian Assange—whom we imagine was wearing nothing but a barrel and suspenders—announced Wikileaks was so broke it might have to shut down in a matter of months. Even more than it already has shut down, that is.
The feds are taking Operation Payback seriously: In response to the Anonymous attacks on Paypal, Mastercard, Amazon, and other corporations that severed ties to Wikileaks in the wake of Cablegate, the FBI has served more than 40 search warrants and subpoenas as part of an ongoing grand jury investigation into the attacks based in San Jose, Calif. We spoke to one target of the investigation, a 19-year-old woman who lives on the West Coast, anonymously about the FBI raid on her home, her participation in the movement, and the FBI's fundamental cluelessness about the nature of Anonymous.
♦ How did Hank Paulson's negotiations with the CEOs of the nation's largest banks go down on Monday? There were no negotiations, actually. He handed them a term sheet and told them to sign it on the spot if they knew what was good for them. [WSJ, NYT]
♦ Whether or not the federal government make actually make money taking a take in all these banks is still up in the air. [NYT]
♦ Will the bailout really change the way Wall Street CEOs are paid? Nah. They "will find other creative ways of paying their executives as they see fit." Which means Lloyd Blankfein will still take home tens of millions. [NYT, Bloomberg]
♦ The credit markets thawed ever so slightly yesterday following the news the U.S. government would take a stake in major banks. It could take weeks or months for things to really improve, though. [WSJ]
