Credit card details at risk as The Home Depot confirms it was hacked
The Home Depot today confirmed that its payment systems were breached by hackers earlier this year. The company is yet to outline the details of the attack, but used vague language to suggest that customers who used credit or debit cards at its retail stores in the US and Canada over the last five months may have had their card details compromised. The breach appears to have been carried out using a similar method to recent attacks on companies such as Target, P.F. Chang’s, and Neiman Marcus. The perpetrators of such attacks uploaded malicious software to cash registers and other point-of-sale systems in order to siphon off card details, which could be sent off-site and could be used to make fraudulent purchases.
The scale of the breach is unclear
The Home Depot says its investigation into the breach began on September 2nd, the same day that reports surfaced that said the retailer was the next in a string of large companies to be targeted by hackers. The hardware giant is focusing its investigation from April onwards, suggesting that the hackers behind the breach were able to skim customer data from the stores’ payment systems for up to five months without being detected.