Target's data breach exposed 40 million credit and debit cards used in stores between late November and mid-December 2013. The stolen information included names, card numbers, expiration dates, and security codes. Security expert Robert Siciliano recommends checking your statements daily.
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Now at noon, millions of holiday shoppers put at risk by a massive data breach at Target. How to know if you were exposed. Now at noon, 40 million shoppers may be exposed because of a massive data breach, and it hit right as the holiday shopping season was getting underway. Thanks for joining us this afternoon. I'm Paula Ebben. David is off. Now, we have just learned that investigators believe Software was installed on the machines which read a card's magnetic strip. Now that's according to CBS News. WBZ's Sarah Congee is joining us live now. She's outside the Target store in Revere.
Sarah, Targets are a busy place during the holiday season, Paula. I've heard people joke about how they live here. They've come here so often during these weeks leading up to Christmas. Well, now consumers who shopped in the stores, not online but in stores, between November 27th and December 15th have really got to start looking at their credit and debit card statements.
This essentially is the holy grail of a data breach.
Holiday shoppers at Target may not be feeling very festive after the company reported 40 million credit and debit card accounts may have been exposed in a data breach.
More than likely what happened was when this server that's responsible for talking to all these different stores' credit card terminals was breached, bad guys were in there, they saw all the data, and they recorded it all, and from there they can actually make charges to your credit card.
Consumers affected are those who shopped between November 27th and December 15th. The data stolen includes names, card numbers, expiration dates, and the 3-digit security codes. In a letter to customers, Target says, "The privacy and protection of our guests' information is a matter we take very seriously, and we have worked swiftly to resolve the incident." Online security expert Robert Siciliano says consumers should check their statements daily.
Now, if 40 million cards were actually compromised, it's gonna take the bad guys a long time to get through all 40 million cards. So the chances of everybody being breached is small. However, you still need to pay very close attention to your credit card statements daily at this point.
Now, Target says it has fixed the problem, and they have hired a leading forensics firm to investigate exactly what happened and to hopefully prevent to prevent it from happening again. Live in Revere this new time, I'm Sarah Congee. Paula, back to you.
Hopefully. Sarah, thanks very much. And if you would like to read the full letter from Target to all its customers and learn how to protect yourself from identity fraud, log on to our website. It's right there at cbsboston.com.
