Credit behemoths Visa and Mastercard were scrambling yesterday to track down the third party processor that stole credit card data from as many as ten million customers.

The stolen data has now been linked to a New York City taxicab or parking-garage company, which has access to millions of credit card numbers.

Experts are now imploring anyone who has ridden in a New York taxi or parked in a garage within the metropolitan area to check their credit card statements or contact their financial institution.

According to Avivah Litan, a security analyst at Gartner Research, thieves have been stockpiling the information for months.

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'From what I hear, the breach involves a taxi and parking garage company in the New York City area, so if you’ve paid a NYC cab in the last few months with your credit or debit card — be sure to check your card statements for possible fraud,’ she said yesterday.

'Those transactions are aggregated' and sent to a server, Ms Litan said. 'It has a lot of hops along the way' before the card information reaches a processor.

She believes the data is already being used on the street by identity thieves.

She wrote on her blog: 'I’ve spoken with folks in the card business who are seeing signs of this breach mushroom. Looks like the hackers have started using the stolen card data more recently.

She also said that unverified reports point to a 'Central American gang that broke into the company's system by answering the application's knowledge-based authentication questions correctly.

'Looks like the hackers took over an administrative account that was not protected sufficiently.’

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