Home Depot Reveals 53 Million E-mail Addresses Stolen in Data Breach
Friday, November 7th, 2014 -- 8:19 AM
(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) -Home Depot revealed Thursday that in its data breach earlier this year resulted in about 53 million email addresses being stolen in addition to information on 56 million payment cards as the home improvement chain disclosed in September.According to the Milwaukee Journal, Home Depot also revealed that the attack was focused on the self-checkout registers. The company said it's making every effort to notify customers whose email addresses were hacked.
The company said the hackers used a third-party vendor's user name and password to enter Home Depot's network, a similar approach to the one used in the Target data breach, where hackers also stole vendor credentials.
The credentials themselves did not give access to the payment information. But through the credentials, the hackers "acquired elevated rights" that allowed them to navigate Home Depot's network and deploy unique, custom-built malware that was designed to avoid antivirus software on the self-checkout cash registers in the United States and Canada.
Home Depot stressed that it has closed the leak and the malware has been eliminated from its systems.
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