Home Depot Breach

Home improvement retailer Home Depot confirms its payment security systems fell victim to a massive cyber attack, possibly since April, at nearly 2,200 stores in the U.S. and Canada.

Fishnet Security, Symantec, and the Secret Service are working to research all behind the breach and what and who all was affected.

According to a person close to the investigation, more than 60 million credit card numbers may have been stolen from Home Depot’s payment system. Comparatively, hackers stole data for over 40 million cards from Target’s system following a three-week attack during the busy Black Friday shopping season.

Home Depot has assured customers they won’t be responsible for any fraudulent charges on their credit or debit cards and has promised to offer free identity-protection services, including credit monitoring. So far, banks have not yet alerted customers to potential fraud.

Home Depot’s cybersecurity system is ranked behind that of other retailers. According to this report, Home Depot takes 1.3 days to clear malware from its system, lagging behind the retail industry average of one day. Online discussions of vulnerabilities on Home Depot’s website date back to 2008. These revelations raise serious concerns about Home Depot’s responsiveness to potential attacks, particularly in light of other retailers that have recently been targeted by hackers.

Two senators asked the federal government to investigate a data breach on the payment-card processing systems of Home Depot Inc.