This content was created by Robert Siciliano. This content was uploaded by Robert Siciliano. This is a YouTube video (title: "Target hacked in Massive credit card breach. @McAfeeConsumer") published December 20, 2013. It contains an English TV news interview/segment from Fox 25's Beacon Hill studio in which a host (Speaker A) interviews Robert Siciliano, McAfee's online security expert, about a large Target data breach affecting roughly 40 million shoppers around Black Friday. The discussion covers how consumers can tell if their card was compromised (watch for unauthorized charges), possible vectors for the breach (malware on point-of-sale software, insecure OS, wireless hack, insider activity), why online transactions may be separate from in-store swipe breaches, and practical consumer advice (frequent statement monitoring, use of mobile apps, consider minimizing card use).
Chapters
All right, welcome back. Some 40 million people may be affected by a massive security breach at Target. If you did any shopping at the store around Black Friday, this could impact you. Joining us now from our Beacon Hill studio is Robert Siciliano. He's McAfee's online security expert. Thanks for being with us on short notice, Robert.
Good morning.
Talk about a story that affects everybody. I mean, a lot of people shop at Target, and we're talking 40 million people potentially here. First things first, if I'm watching this this morning and I'm realizing that I have shopped at Target around Black Friday— I think they said even till December 15th, how do I know if my card has been compromised?
You'll only know if you see unauthorized charges on your credit card. Now, uh, because it's just occurred, the bad guys might not have got to all 40 million credit cards at this point. So while your card data might have been breached, the charges might not have been made, but you gotta keep checking your statements frequently.
Oh, so it— you can't foresee if it might happen, you have to just kinda keep checking it and do it that way.
Well, what's gonna probably happen is, uh, now that the breach has been disclosed and Target's tightened things up, They're gonna probably recognize just what card numbers had been compromised, and they'll provide the different, you know, Visa, MasterCard, American Express with the card numbers that were compromised, and then they'll turn around and they'll notify the card users, and more than likely everyone's gonna get new cards.
How does something like this even happen and become so widespread? Was this a computer hack into their system? Because they're talking about the, the PIN pads here.
So it could have happened in a number of different ways. At the point of sale, there is software that could have been breached. There It could have been a virus that ended up on that software as a result of an insecure operating system. It could have been a wireless hack. It could have been an employee on the inside. Mm-hmm. There's a number of different things. I don't think it was an actual hardware hack, meaning, like, the PIN pads were replaced. I mean, 40 million is a significant amount of card numbers to be compromised with a hardware hack, but it is possible.
Now, Target says that this only affects the people that actually shopped in the stores and swiped their cards there and that it's not if you were shopping online, but it sounds It sounds to me like this is still some sort of maybe a software issue. So how can they be sure that nothing online was compromised either?
So more than likely, the, uh, when the breach was discovered, they had, uh, uh, discovered it as a result of some type of a scan that was done. They saw an anomaly, they chased down that anomaly, and they discovered that there was some type of a malware, malicious software on the system. And usually with, you know, your online transactions versus the point of sale in the store, you know, there's a big difference in the, the, the servers and the hardware, the software. The locations of them, so they know, they know the difference. And the fact that they tightened it up after 3 weeks, this is gonna end up costing them a lot of money.
If I take my credit card, like I often do, and I walk into an established store like Target, my expectation is that something like this won't happen in a store like that. Is there any way to protect yourself as a consumer from something like this happening?
Yeah, when people ask me, you know, how do I protect my credit card number, my response is, don't use it. Because every time you use it, there's an opportunity for it to be breached. So the best case scenario is really check your statements online, weekly. And if you have an app, if your credit card application offers an app that you can put on your mobile, check it daily.
All right, online expert Robert Siciliano joining us this morning from our Beacon Hill studio. It's a story that's still developing. We appreciate you being here this morning.
