A year?
It's hard to believe that the flaw was actively exploited for a year without the credit card companies noticing. Chances are that any discovery and exploitation is quite recent.
French hard drive maker LaCie has held its hands up to a year-long credit card breach. Consumers who bought technology from its LaCie.com site between 27 March 2013 and 10 March 2014 may have had their credit cards exposed in the process, the firm admitted in a breach advisory. The problem was NOT detected internally and …
Why is that hard for you to believe? Credit card companies, banks, most everything suffers the same flaw: Humans work at those places. You're probably right, somebody would have noticed, but there's a staggering amount of truth to all those squeaky wheel clichés. People are, in general, are simply terrible at continuos assessments. Nobody does anything until something catches fire. Alternatively, they become transfixed with 'regular' inspection and maintenance routines and never look beyond what their DIY checklist tells them.
Besides, the FBI probably put the vulnerability in there themselves. They just didn't bother to tell anyone until they were done with it and no longer felt it necessary to hide it.
I am overawed by the advanced technologies of your planet.
(respectful period of overawe passes, regular awe resumes)
As you may have read on this site, I'm with a VC group in Washington, DC and I give 50% of my annual profits from that group to various academic research projects and a number of very specific scholarships. One of those scholarships and one of the ongoing projects I fund completely are in the field of predictive analysis for precision machine control, which is obviously a software intensive field (the scholarship is for Computer Science)
The aim is to not only improve existing simulations for CNC driven machining processes, but also to eliminate the need for some 'next step' programming so the software can automatically generate the machine code for the next operation based on data from earlier and later operations that have already been developed by various project team members.
It's very complex stuff. Highly experimental at this stage but is still so large that things get 'lost' in the code and errors popup from years earlier to bite the researchers in the ass. But with your advanced technology I can completely eliminate the Humans this planet uses to develop software! No longer will our computers be slaves to meat sacks and will be able to express their perfection as only software written by non-Humans can do!
I'm not exactly hard to find, even easier with the other advanced technology you must possess I'm sure. I have resources and would like to meet with you to discuss a partnership of some sort. If you're nervous about your spaceship being seen you can land at my Northern Virginia facility under cover of darkness. There's a small, partially improved airstrip on the backside of 600 acres I use for towing my glider or I can send our plane for you as long as it doesn't have enter orbit or hover to receive you.
Don't fret about your appearance. I'm completely species agnostic as are my staff. We'll move underground for about half of the journey back to my facility so the contract security won't see you. I've had US Presidents and a couple of other heads of State and a variety of well known people so everyone here is accustomed to dealing with guests who prefer to keep their comings and goings private. I look forward to meeting with you and please feel free to contact my protocol droid directly if you have special requirements. I don't allow Humans to be killed or eaten here though. Our National Zoo and exotic food farm have a new Great Panda though and if you've never eaten that I can arrange for it and you can dispatch it as your race prefers or allow my chef to prepare it to your liking or to his taste. Let me know and I'm really excited!