Heartland payment systems

In a press release to coincide with the inauguration of President Barack Obama, a credit card processor Heartland Payment Systems announced Tuesday that it suffered a serious breach of security at some point in 2008, allowing the possibility of pirates steal credit card information on what is perhaps more than 100 million accounts.

Heartland is the sixth largest payment processor in the country and specializes in processing transactions for small and medium-sized retailers and restaurants. According to Wired wire, which handles more than 100 million transactions per month.

Federal investigators identified the source of the breach last week. Spyware is installed somewhere in the internal network of the company that are inhaled into the clear credit card transactions, as it passes through the systems Heartland.