Robert Siciliano, a personal security expert, discusses the Target breach that compromised roughly 40 million credit and debit card accounts. He explains how hackers likely infiltrated point-of-sale systems and recommends monitoring for unauthorized charges rather than canceling cards immediately.
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Well, the security breach at Target is said to be so massive and so alarming that it has the attention of the Secret Service. The Secret Service is actually investigating right now. 40 million cards could have been stolen. An identity theft expert joins us next on what you need to know. An absolutely mind-boggling, massive security breach involving possibly every single one of Target's 1,800 stores across this country. 40 million credit and debit card accounts potentially compromised, including personal information stored in the magnetic strip on the back of your cards. The Secret Service is currently investigating the breach, and Robert Siciliano is a personal security and identity theft expert, and he joins us now. Robert, I should mention the dates. It's between November 27th and December 15th, so the day before Thanksgiving up until this Sunday. If you shopped at Target and you used a credit or debit card, you could be in this group. If our viewers are in that group, What should they do?
Yeah, my wife's in that group, you know, and I think I might be too. Uh, you have to pay close attention to your credit card statements because when bad guys get access to this type of information, they know the clock's ticking, that that data eventually might be useless once it's discovered and the card numbers are canceled. So they'll make charges, they'll make unauthorized credit card transactions over the phone, in person, they'll clone cards, and they'll rack up as many dollars as they possibly can. So check your statements as quickly as possible and refute unauthorized charges.
Robert, are you going to proactively cancel your card because of something like this?
You know, that has been a question people have been asking me all day today, and I am not. So I pay very close attention to my statements. I refute charges if I ever see them that aren't supposed to be there. But once you cancel it, that's it. You might not get a new card for another week or two. You can always use another card that you might not have used at that store. But, you know, I think it's, it's just really important to pay close attention to your statements. As long as you're doing that, you should be fine.
It— how did they get this information? Does it seem like there was a hacking of the actual devices where people were swiping their cards, or is it in the broader computer system that Target has?
So I would suspect the broader computer system that has access to all the point-of-sale devices, because if 40,000 point-of-sale devices were actually compromised, meaning that somebody physically swapped them out or attached a device to each one of them. That would be the largest organized crime in the history of the world. So really, I think they had to have gotten access to a server that talks to all these point-of-sale devices.
Who do you think does something like that? Is it— is— I mean, where would you look first? Interesting the Secret Service is involved. It's, it's massive if indeed this is the truth about what happened. Who did it?
Yeah, a lot of the breaches that have occurred are done by organized web mobs that function here in the— and are scattered throughout the world. They are technologists, criminal hackers that understand the mechanics of all— of how all this stuff works. Often they might need somebody on the inside here to make things happen, but in general they can function on the web from all over the world and find the vulnerabilities in these networks and get paid all over the world, too.
We'd love to follow up with you, Robert, and especially— again, this story very new, very fresh. I hope you got something good at Target. I hope your car is not stolen as well.
Christmas present.
Robert, great to see you. Look forward to having you back. Thank you.
