Summary: Home Depot and its customers suffer what could be the largest security breach in retailer history.
The cyber attack against Home Depot, first reported last Tuesday and then confirmed this Monday, could be the largest attack against a retailer so far. It is anticipated to exceed even Target’s breach over the holidays last year, with several experts claiming as much as $60 million in cardholders funds may be compromised.
Those potentially vulnerable to this cyber attack, which was infiltrated through malware, include customers using credit cards at retail outlets in Canada and the United States since April, during the spring busy-season of the store.
“While the company continues to determine the full scope, scale, and impact of the breach, there is no evidence that debit PIN numbers were compromised,” a statement from the store claimed, and as the Washington Post reported.
Nevertheless, security reporter Brian Krebs, who wrote of the breach last week, noted that “multiple financial institutions … are reporting a steep increase over the past few days in fraudulent ATM withdrawals on customer accounts.”
“We apologize for the frustration and anxiety this causes our customers,” said Home Depot’s chief executive Frank Blake, “and I want to thank them for their patience and support as we work through this issue. We owe it to our customers to alert them that we now have enough evidence to confirm that a breach has occurred. It’s important to emphasize that no customers will be responsible for fraudulent charges to their accounts.”
To answer the assault, Home Depot has decided to go through with a decision they’d made before they were aware of it: to install point-of-sale systems with a card reader that can read pin and chip cards, a more secure way of paying, which is widely practiced in Europe. Magnetic strip cards, those commonly used in the United States, offer a moment when the credit card information is transmitted unencrypted, something the pin and chip cards do not.