Target security breach caused by malware on PoS registers
A little more than a month ago Target revealed that over Black Friday and the following roughly two weeks thereafter, a hack had been taking place in its system siphoning customers credit card information to hackers. The original estimate of 40 million customers personal information being stolen paled in comparison to the admission from Target later that the number was in fact over 70 million. While many of us and our banks scrambled to clean up Targets mess since then, only today do we find out how the hackers did it. It turns out malware had been installed directly onto Targets point of service registers. Unfortunately at this point they have only figured out how it was done, but are working with law enforcement agencies to figure out who was behind it. To make matters worse a recent report claimed three other major US retailers were hacked in a similar fashion over the holidays, although they have yet to be named. So even if you aren’t a Target shopper, it sounds like there could be a good chance your credit card details are still out in the wild if that recent report turns out to be true. However something tells me until one of these hacks directly hits a congressman’s bank account, an apology is all we can expect from businesses when their neglect of customers personal information results in it being sold online.
Ben Johnson
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