Notice: AtmoVantage Payment Gateway Targeted in Card Testing Attack

In the overnight hours of February 9th AtmoVantage was made aware of a credit card testing attack that targeted one of our online payment gateways. A “testing attack” is when an unknown bad actor, who already has a bunch of potentially compromised credit card numbers, uses a random online payment gateway to test each of those numbers to find out if any of them work. If a test charge is successful then they know they have a working credit card and can use it to make other, more substantial purchases.

AtmoVantage observed 157 credit card testing attempts within approximately 6 hours. Only 10 of those tests resulted in a successful charge. Each successful test charge was $5.00 and was made through the Stripe gateway.

Normally Stripe provides fraud protection to prevent these sorts of attacks from succeeding in the first place, but fraud protection doesn’t catch 100% of the cases. AtmoVantage took immediate action upon discovering this attack against our payment gateway. Here is what we did to address this incident:

1. Disabled the payment gateway that was used in the attack to prevent further abuse until further notice
2. Created an internal incident report to document this event
3. Refunded all 10 of the successful test payments
4. Posted this public notice for anyone who had a compromised credit card used in this event

Those individuals who had a successful test payment should see a refund within their bank accounts within 5-10 business days. Filing a chargeback dispute with your financial institution against AtmoVantage is not necessary at this time because a refund has already been initiated. More importantly, individuals who had a successful test payment should immediately cancel their card to prevent any further fraud being committed.

To be clear, this event was not a data breach of AtmoVantage systems. All AtmoVantage customer data remains secure and unaffected. This was simply card-testing abuse of unknown third-parties who already had a compromised credit card in the hands of a bad actor. AtmoVantage and its officers/representatives bear no responsibility for the fact that the effected credit card numbers were compromised in the first place. More information about card testing fraud can be found here.

If you think you were personally affected by this card-testing event and want to verify that a refund has been initiated you may contact AtmoVantage using our contact form, by scheduling an appointment, or by calling directly (860) 717-2773.