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Home Depot breach bigger than Target at 56M cards

67 points| anigbrowl | 11 years ago |reuters.com | reply

51 comments

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[+] bronbron|11 years ago|reply
Part of me wonders if security will ever be something people actually care about, and value.

Home depot had a huge, huge security breach. Their stock price? Up 12 points from last year.

I'm not sure what it would take for people to really value a major security breach. The tech guy inside me is screaming, "why wouldn't you care about this?", but the regular guy inside me thinks, "who cares? the banks will handle any stolen credit card info."

[+] tacoman|11 years ago|reply
I don't really know much about this sort of thing. I assume that to the retailer that gets pwned, they get a few weeks or months of bad press then pass the cost of that breach on to future customers.

The "regular guy" in me thinks, "Meh, I'll probably ending up paying 5 cents more for light bulbs because of this. Oh well."

I feel bad for the sysadmin/security guys at these companies, probably screaming for budget and not getting it. What do you think they're doing now? Helping some high paid IR consultant restore logs from backups. Good times!

[+] saturdaysaint|11 years ago|reply
Well, we should find out as NFC and biometric authenticated payments (Apple Pay and TouchID) are about to hit the mainstream US consumer market in a big way. I'll certainly think twice about shopping at any big box retailer (ie the bigger targets, no pun intended) that doesn't let me pay that way.
[+] sliverstorm|11 years ago|reply
That's the whole point of the liability shift. It will matter a lot more when the store is wholly liable, instead of this conditional liability depending on "indications of shortcomings in their security".

(In a year or so, stores that don't use EMV assume liability for fraud)

[+] smackfu|11 years ago|reply
It's mainly up due to a good earnings report in August, and good guidance going forward.

If the breach doesn't hurt earnings, why should the stock price move?

[+] mrweasel|11 years ago|reply
Could someone please explain to me why Home Depot and Target would even have the information of 56M cards?

Is this a result of not using chip and PIN, relying on offline transaction processing or some weird subscription plan?

I understand that there would be a cost involved in implementing chip and PIN across the entire US and it may not solve the issue if they insist on having the card on file. Online credit card processing has been pretty much standard for the last ten years here in Denmark. Terminals are connecting to the credit card processor, either via an ISDN/ADSL/phone/GSM connection, everything is encryptet and the store never has anything expect the cardmask.

So why do companies like Target have the card information of their customers?

[+] opium_tea|11 years ago|reply
From this link: http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/09/in-home-depot-breach-inve...

"The malicious software that unknown thieves used to steal credit and debit card numbers in the data breach at Home Depot this year was installed mainly on payment systems in the self-checkout lanes at retail stores, according to sources close to the investigation."

So it's not that Home Depot (i'm not sure this applies to Target) had the credit card info stolen from their servers. It's more that it was skimmed from their self-checkout machines, though by software though rather than hardware.

[+] coldcode|11 years ago|reply
The sad thing is we will probably never learn the exact problem and that means we the industry will never learn from their stupidity.
[+] Sami_Lehtinen|11 years ago|reply
If they would have followed Payment Application Data Security Standard as many others do, they wouldn't have had this problem.
[+] wyager|11 years ago|reply
PADSS is a CYA tool, little else.

You can't checklist your way to good security.

[+] programminggeek|11 years ago|reply
So, I assume Apple Pay will solve some of these kinds of problems? Otherwise, what's the point?
[+] wyager|11 years ago|reply
>Otherwise, what's the point?

Convenience.

Credit cards are based on a broken "pull money without permission" model.

The only way to get good security is to start with a system that doesn't suck; specifically, one that involves "pushing" money to an account rather than "pulling" it from an account.

Bitcoin got this right. So did the various non-CC services like Paypal and Venmo.

[+] praseodym|11 years ago|reply
It will, because Apple Pay uses a EMV-based protocol (also known as chip-and-PIN) over NFC. The actual card secrets that can be used to authorise payments never leave the iPhone's secure element.

Additionally, because you authorise the exact amount on the iPhone, hacking the terminal to have it charge a higher amount than shown on its display is impossible.

[+] breakall|11 years ago|reply
My understanding is that any info retained by Home Depot or another retailer after you use Apple Pay could not be re-used elsewhere.

As someone who has to cancel his cards once or twice a year due to unauthorized purchases, this sounds great! (I could go back to cash, hmmm......)

[+] pyre|11 years ago|reply
> Otherwise, what's the point?

Funneling more cash to Apple?

[+] post_break|11 years ago|reply
After having my card cancelled from the Target theft, and now this, I'm done with Home Depot.
[+] eli|11 years ago|reply
I kinda feel like having to replace a lost/stolen card number is just part of the cost of doing business by credit card.
[+] IvyMike|11 years ago|reply
I guess there's two theories why the alternative stores to Target and Home Depot were not hacked: A) Skill B) Luck

I'm a cynic so I'm going with B.

(Actually, I may go with "C" which is "there are probably breaches that we just haven't heard of yet")

[+] JDDunn9|11 years ago|reply
Home Depot? I'm good. Tell me when Amazon gets breached.
[+] phaemon|11 years ago|reply
What's your robot butler thing? That sounds interesting.
[+] clubhi|11 years ago|reply
I could never decide if I preferred Home Depot or Lowes. This makes the decision easy for me.
[+] sliverstorm|11 years ago|reply
You think this means Lowes is any less likely to be breached? Today it's you, tomorrow it's me.
[+] cordite|11 years ago|reply
They've kept things cleaner and have more people to answer questions in my experience.
[+] marincounty|11 years ago|reply
This stuff goes on while my picture is taken at least three times if I want to buy a nut at that rediculios store.

By the way, HD does not necessarily have the lowest price anymore--shop around.

Oh yea, your employees hate your company more than your customers do. If there's shortage--It's probally Internal?

Hay Chantel--a manager asked if I wanted to have you written up. I figured working there was punishment enough.(bad customer service experience--really bad.)