http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-17/u-s-agent-lures-romanian-hackers-in-subway-data-heist.html By Del Quentin Wilber Bloomberg April 16, 2014 U.S. Secret Service Agent Matt O’Neill was growing nervous. For three months, he’d been surreptitiously monitoring hackers’ communications and watching as they siphoned thousands of credit card numbers from scores of U.S. retailers. Most every day O’Neill was alerting a credit card company or retailer to an online heist. The result was predictable: the companies canceled hijacked credit and debit cards and the aggravated hackers’ customers began complaining that the stolen card numbers weren’t working as promised. It was only a matter of time before the cyber thieves realized they were being watched. “We were hoping they wouldn’t figure it out until we could catch them,” O’Neill said. The Secret Service and FBI are investigating an increasing number of attacks on U.S. retailers’ data, including the massive breach of Target Corp. (TGT) last year that affected more than 40 million debit and credit card accounts. Investigators won’t talk about the Target probe. Instead, the Secret Service pointed to O’Neill’s investigation that began in 2010 as an example of how they go about solving such crimes. […]