I recently heard from a source in law enforcement who had a peculiar problem. The source investigates cybercrime, and he was reaching out for advice after trying but failing to conduct undercover buys of stolen credit cards from a well-known underground card market. Turns out, the cybercrime bazaar’s own security system triggered a “pig alert” and brazenly flagged the fed’s transactions as an undercover purchase placed by a law enforcement officer.
In December 2013, just days after a data breach exposed 40 million customer debit and credit card accounts, Target Corp. hired security experts at Verizon to probe its networks for weaknesses. The results of that confidential investigation — until now never publicly revealed — confirm what pundits have long suspected: Once inside Target’s network, there was nothing stop attackers from gaining direct and complete access to every single cash register in every Target store.
The Trump Hotel Collection, a string of luxury hotel properties tied to business magnate and now Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, appears to be the latest victim of a credit card breach, according to data shared by several U.S.-based banks.
This week, nationwide beauty products chain Sally Beauty disclosed that, for the second time in a year, it was investigating reports that hackers had broken into its networks and stolen customer credit card data. That investigation is ongoing, but I recently had an opportunity to interview a former Sally Beauty IT technician who provided a first-hand look at how the first breach in 2014 breach went down.
“PoSeidon,” a new strain of malicious software designed to steal credit and debit card data from hacked point-of-sale (POS) devices, has been implicated in a number of recent breaches involving companies that provide POS services primarily to restaurants, bars and hotels. The shift by the card thieves away from targeting major retailers like Target and Home Depot to attacking countless, smaller users of POS systems is giving financial institutions a run for their money as they struggle to figure out which merchants are responsible for card fraud.
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.
Sources within the financial industry say they’re seeing signs that Dairy Queen may be the latest retail chain to be victimized by cybercrooks bent on stealing credit card data. Dairy Queen says it has no indication of a card breach at any of its thousands of locations, but the company also acknowledges that nearly all stores are franchises and that there is no established company process or requirement that franchisees communicate security issues or card breaches to Dairy Queen headquarters.
On Monday, I had the distinct pleasure of being a guest on Terry Gross’s Fresh Air radio show on National Public Radio. I’m a huge fan of Gross’s show and was quite flattered and honored to have been invited.
Earlier this month, beauty products chain Sally Beauty acknowledged that a hacker break-in compromised fewer than 25,000 customer credit and debit cards. My previous reporting indicated that the true size of the breach was at least ten times larger. While the number of cards known to be compromised so far pales in comparison to the 40 million cards exposed by the breach at some 1,800 Target locations, new analysis suggests that the Sally Beauty breach may have impacted far more stores –virtually all 2,600+ Sally Beauty locations nationwide.
Nationwide beauty products chain Sally Beauty appears to be the latest victim of a breach targeting their payment card systems in stores, according to both sources in the banking industry and new raw data from underground cybercrime shops that traffic in stolen credit and debit cards.
