The Home Depot Breach Has Widened Even Further To Include Innocent Victim’s Email Addresses
Back in early September, the do-it-yourself hardware chain, Home Depot, which is based in Atlanta, experienced the largest retail card breach ever reported, according to many sources. The breach exposed the information of 56 million unique payment cards. Although the company states that no PIN information was stolen during the attack, it has been reported that bank sources are seeing regular incidents of fraudulent debit cards being used to empty bank accounts. And now, it has been determined that the breach is even more serious than we originally thought.
At the start of the month, the company announced that the breach included the theft of 53 million email addresses. Although they said that no sensitive personal information, passwords or additional payment card information was compromised, it’s still shocking to know that this huge breach of retail cards extends as far as innocent people’s email addresses. And, if we thought this was terrible enough, there’s even more to tell you.While not all data breaches can be stopped, many can, and highrisk-merchantaccount.com have options to help.
Home Depot has also revealed that the investigation unearthed even more information. In a statement, the company said that the breach originated from a third party vendor, whose logon credentials gave hackers access to the “perimeter” of the do-it-yourself retailer’s network, but not full and complete access. They added that the thieves then “acquired elevated rights” that allowed them to install custom-built malware on the POS systems of Home Depot’s self-checkout aisles.
It’s obvious that this unfair and unlawful breach is worrying for many innocent people. Just when we thought the exposure of information of 56 million unique payment cards was bad enough, it was then revealed that 53 million email addresses were compromised, too. The only statement we can make, at this point, is that we hope this is the last retail breach we’ll see.
