Yes, that's what he said.  I know what he meant, but nonetheless, it's the kind of line that both Norm Crosby and Yogi Berra would be proud of.

According to Newsday.com Heartland has closed the security hole that ultimately may lead their own extinction...especially considering how bad their ticker looks today.

I've posted comments throughout.

"Heartland says it has closed the security hole that allowed criminals to infiltrate their systems, but the matter is far from settled.

The company will likely have to pay big penalties to banks to reimburse the cost of issuing new cards, and analysts say the intrusion could even threaten the company's survival if the big card brands decide to cut off Heartland from connecting to their networks.

"If you're actually able to compromise that protected network, you're in, man — you have the keys to the kingdom," said Mike Rothman, senior vice president of strategy for security software vendor eIQnetworks Inc. "I presume they were able to sniff a large part of the payment traffic at the time the network was compromised."

Robert Baldwin, Heartland's president and chief financial officer, said the thieves accessed a part of Heartland's network that handles transactions for 175,000 of the 250,000 merchants the company works with. He said the program slipped past Heartland's antivirus software and was able to read data in unencrypted form as it was passed from Heartland to the card brands.  Baldwin said Heartland uses heavy encryption, which means its data is cloaked in special computer coding so unauthorized computers can't read it, but added that the data has to be sent in unencrypted form to the card brands, which is where the criminals were able to spot it. (Editor's Note:  "and  therein lies the problem)

"Baldwin emphasized that no PIN codes were believed stolen. Baldwin added that the company passed an industry-mandated security inspection in April."  (about which much will be written in coming days/weeks/months)

"Unfortunately the bad guys are very, very good," he  said. "The malware we encountered did not, and does not, get very well captured by antivirus software, (ya-think?)) so it's a challenge we're going to have to keep working as an industry to combat." 

Continue Reading at Newsday.com