Robert Siciliano discusses major retail data breaches at Target and Neiman Marcus, pointing to Russian involvement based on malware code and server locations. He suggests retailers may be covering up the full scope of compromised customer data and warns of risks to the U.S. financial system.
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Can't get the NSA scandal down, but big retailers are dealing with a scandal that just keeps flaring up. I want you to meet the guys saying that they're involved in a massive cover-up over hack attacks that just will not, will not let up. Well, from Russia without love, in tonight's B-segment, it is looking like Russians are behind at least part of the Target hack attacks that hit more than 100 million customers. McAfee Online Security analyst Robert Siciliano says a lot of retailers besides Target may also have been hit, and it won't just stop with them. But they're not saying that, Robert. Um, what makes you think, first of all, it's coming from that neck of the woods, and that, uh, B, more could be caught up in this?
Well, Neil, clearly, uh, you know, some say that there is some form of a cover-up here. No one's talking. Uh, Neiman Marcus hasn't disclosed how much information has been breached. It seems that Target's data, the information that it was hacked, goes back years, that they've had a breach since 2005, that I'm not sure was properly reported, or at least I don't know. And the code shows some Russian language built into the virus or the malware, so it looks like there's a possibility that Russian organized crime is behind this particular breach.
To what end, Robert? To what end?
Well, we know that the BlackPOS, which is the name of the malware, was on— has been on the dark web, the black market, for at least a year now. To the degree that, you know, Russian organized criminals are involved, well, The Wall Street Journal and others are reporting, you know, again, Russian language in the code, and the servers that were downloading as much as 11 gigabytes a day of target data were also located in Russia.
If you think about all of these hits, I mean, certainly they're scary. But so far you haven't seen a lot of people lose money. I know they're covered in that event. You know, everything else is covered. They're a little, you know, frightened off from shopping for a while. They don't go to Target for a while or even Marcus for a while. But I always think we're one step away from something far, far more serious. You know, potentially millions of Americans' bank accounts being drained. And therein lies the real danger.
I know plenty of people whose credit cards were compromised. And, you know, there's bad—
By the way, what does it mean compromised? What does that mean?
Taken over, account takeover, that there were unauthorized charges made and there were Coach bags bought as a result of credit card fraud. And that is just the beginning. When our financial system revolves around ones and zeros, you know, digital information that's essentially, you know, stored in the cloud, you know, servers basically in clean rooms, and those servers can be accessed by bad guys in this way, to the degree where they're able to download this much information in such a short period of time, it definitely is a cause for alarm that our entire financial system could be in jeopardy if we don't get up to speed in regards to protecting the information that, you know, is in the hands of the banks and the retailers in a way that the bad guys can't get access to it.
I always think it's a warm-up act, as was the first World Trade Center attack, to the follow-up more devastating World Trade Center attack. They're going after retailers and some of these other folks serves as a warm-up to doing something more damaging to our financial system, or am I just paranoid?
Yeah, I— you're not the only one with that fear. You know, I've heard many others, and it's a concern of mine, as well. You know, our information is digitized. You know, we're not usually— we don't have paper as backup any longer. It's all in the cloud. There's just so much information out there. And in the wrong hands, down the road, you know, it could cause a disruption in our economy if a significant attack occurs.
Robert, thank you very, very much. Always good having you on this stuff. Robert Siciliano knows this better than almost anybody I know.
