As if the credit card breach at Home Depot didn’t already look enough like the Target breach: Home Depot said yesterday that the hackers who stole 56 million customer credit and debit card accounts also made off with 53 million customer email addresses.
In an era when new consumer data breaches are disclosed daily, fake claims about data leaks are sadly becoming more common. These claims typically come from fame-seeking youngsters who enjoy trolling journalists and corporations, and otherwise wasting everyone’s time. Fortunately, a new analysis of recent bogus breach claims provides some simple tools that anyone can use to quickly identify fake data leak claims.
In the interests of full disclosure: Sourcebooks, the company that on Nov. 18 is publishing my upcoming book about organized cybercrime, disclosed last week that a breach of its Web site shopping cart software may have exposed customer credit card and personal information.
Fortunately, this breach does not affect readers who have pre-ordered Spam Nation through the retailers I’ve been recommending — Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Politics & Prose. I mention this breach mainly to get out in front of it, and because of the irony and timing of this unfortunate incident.
Multiple banks say they have identified a pattern of credit and debit card fraud suggesting that several Staples Inc. office supply locations in the Northeastern United States are currently dealing with a breach involving in-store customer transactions. Staples says it is investigating “a potential issue” and has contacted law enforcement.
Sears Holding Co. late Friday said it recently discovered that point-of-sale registers at its Kmart stores were compromised by malicious software that stole customer credit and debit card information. The company says it has removed the malware from store registers… Read More »
Nationwide fast-food chain Dairy Queen on Thursday confirmed that malware installed on cash registers at some 395 stores resulted in the theft of customer credit and debit card information. The acknowledgement comes nearly six weeks after this publication first broke the news that multiple banks were reporting indications of a card breach at Dairy Queen locations across the country.
On Monday, KrebsOnSecurity notified the Municipal Bond Insurance Association — the nation’s largest bond insurer — that a misconfiguration in a company Web server had exposed countless customer account numbers, balances and other sensitive data. Much of the information had been indexed by search engines, including a page listing administrative credentials that attackers could use to access data that wasn’t already accessible via a simple Web search.
“Please note that [COMPANY NAME] takes the security of your personal data very seriously.” If you’ve been on the Internet for any length of time, chances are very good that you’ve received at least one breach notification email or letter that includes some version of this obligatory line. But as far as lines go, this one is about as convincing as the classic break-up line, “It’s not you, it’s me.”
Signature Systems Inc., the point-of-sale vendor blamed for a credit and debit card breach involving some 216 Jimmy John’s sandwich shop locations, now says the breach also may have jeopardized customer card numbers at nearly 100 other independent restaurants across the country that use its products.
More than seven weeks after this publication broke the news of a possible credit card breach at nationwide sandwich chain Jimmy John’s, the company now confirms that a break-in at one of its payment vendors jeopardized customer credit and debit card information at 216 stores.
