Target 2013 Breach: A Case Study

Even though Target is ranked currently 36 in the fortune 500 companies and have over 1750 stores, they are still very susceptible to being a victim of a cyber attack. In 2013, Target fell victim to a security breach on their system. Roughly around Thanksgiving of 2013, someone had installed malware in Target’s security and payment system enabling the hackers to steal credit card and personal information. “Six months earlier the company began installing a $1.6 million malware detection tool made by the computer security firm FireEye, whose customers also include the CIA and the Pentagon.” (BloombergBusiness) In place was a very effective security system. However, when the attacked happen on November 30, FireEye spotted the hackers and Bangalore (a third party cyber security company hired by Target) that alerted the IT team at corporate office in Minneapolis. There was no response from Target’s Corporate IT team and therefore led to 40 million credit card numbers and 70 million addresses, phone numbers and other personal

Even though Target is ranked currently 36 in the fortune 500 companies and have over 1750 stores, they are still very susceptible to being a victim of a cyber attack. In 2013 Target fell victim to a security breach on their system. Roughly around Thanksgiving of 2013 someone had installed malware in Target’s security and payment system enabling the hackers to steal credit card and personal information. “Six months earlier the company began installing a $1.6 million malware detection tool made by the computer security firm FireEye, whose customers also include the CIA and the Pentagon.” (BloombergBusiness) In place was a very effective security system, but when the attacked happen on November 30, FireEye spotted the hackers and Bangalore, a third party cyber security company hired by Target alerted the IT team at corporate office in Minneapolis. There was no response from Target’s Corporate IT team and therefore led to the 40 million credit card numbers and 70 million addresses, phone numbers

During the last Christmas season, Target announced that their data security was breached. According to David Lazarus in Los Angeles Times, Target stated that roughly 110 million customers’ information was illegally taken from their database. The information included their credit/debit card info, phone numbers, and email addresses. Target is one of the most popular grocery stores in the U.S.; they have a substantial amount of consumers. Because of this incident, consumers' trusts for the store have been decreasing. Worrying about losing its customers, the company offered a free year of credit monitoring and identity-theft protection, so the customers will feel more secure. Not only Target, some other large retailers also faced the same issues. They want their customers to trust that the companies can protect private data. However, should we not worry? Data breaches have been going on for about a decade, but we have not seriously thought about the issue. In order to protect people’s privacy, the federal government should make new laws concerning companies’ handling of customer information.

The Target Corporation has undergone many changes due to the 2013 security breach where hackers stole personal information from credit and debit cards of at least 70 million customers. Target sales and reputation has dropped from this instance, thus eliciting changes in their security systems, changes in management, and a few policy changes in handling customer information. With the public eye on the corporation’s handling of the situation, Target has been communicating these changes through various means. The changes they needed to communicate were informing customers of the security breach, addressing the bad press coverage to shareholders, downsizing of employees, and

In December of 2013, target corporation faced a serious security breach where over 40 million credit cards were stolen from different target stores. This paper is going to explore the problem, the background information about the problem, the controls that could have been in place to prevent the issue, the intended plan of control and the associated risks involved.

Upon arrival, I spoke Asset Protection Business Partner, Matt Carroll, who advised me that an employee of Starbucks named Basil Bonney, loaded two Target Gift cards without rendering cash payment for them. Carroll stated that he was notified by Investigation Technician from Target located in North Brunswick that he had identified a cash theft. Carroll stated that his investigation revealed that Bonny loaded two target gift cards with account #041-216-702-120-083 and #041-216-490-244-319 with total value of $450.00. First card, account ending 083, had four separate transactions on June 19, 2017 at 0711 hours, same day at 1858 hours, June 20, 2017 at 1111 hours, and June 21, 2017 at 0704 hours total amount of $400.00 dollars. Second card, account ending 319 had one transaction on June 23, 2017 at 2117 hours with amount of $50.00 dollars.

Once Target released the breach to the public, sales dropped. The company attempted to attract skeptical customers to shop by offering a 10 percent discount on purchases in its stores the weekend before Christmas, but the damage to customer loyalty appeared in the latest sales figures. Target reportedly spent a significant amount of money on security technology (Capacio, 2014). Although systems used encryption, the encryption was presented ineffective because the data was entered in memory where it was unencrypted. For encryption to be effective, the company must hire a defense in depth strategy in which they can also defend the key and protect access to systems where the data needs to be unencrypted in order to be processed (Ferguson, Schneieir,

The hackers were able to update the malware two times to strengthen their malware in order to extract data efficiently. The hackers managed to stay in Target’s network and move from one part of the network to the other without detection. The final stage of APT kill chain was data extraction. Data extraction in Targets case was done on many levels. First, the hackers were able to copy credit card credentials of previous shoppers. Secondly, hackers were able to steal phone numbers and addresses from Target’s reward program. Finally, hackers were able to steal credit card information as costumers were using the POS to finalize their shopping. 2. What were the significant breakdowns in Target’s security operations that may have intensified the magnitude and impact of the breach?There were many downfalls of Target’s security system that lead to the significance of the attack.i.Target did not perform security checks with the vendors to examine their security protocols such as using a free malware detection software that was not suitable for business

Target a large retail corporation that operates over 1,700 stores across the United States. They also operate as an online retailer at target.com. In 2012 the retailer earned more than $73 billion dollars in revenue and grew their sales by 5.1% from the previous year. Looking at the revenue and sales growth rate it is hard to fathom that more money could not be spent to ensure that consumer data is protected as much as possible. As information security specialists one of the worst things that can happen is our network gets infiltrated and customer information is stolen. On December 19, 2013 Target released a statement stating that they have had an information

The Target data breach remains one of the most notable breaches in history, it was the first time a CEO of a major corporation was fired due to a security event. The breach received an enormous amount of attention, it caused corporations and individuals to change the way they think about information security and data protection. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2013 hackers gained access to 40 million customer credit cards and personal data of 70 million Target customers. The intruders slipped in by using stolen credentials and from there gained access to vulnerable servers on Targets network to launch their attack and steal sensitive customer data from the POS cash registers. All this occurred without a response from Targets security operations center, even though security systems notified them of suspicious activity. The data was then sold on the black market for an estimated $53 million dollars. However, the cost to Target, creditors, and banks exceeded half of a billion dollars. This report will review how the infiltration occurred, what allowed the breach to occur including Targets response, and finally who was impacted by the security event.

In December 2013, Target was attacked by a cyber-attack due to a data breach. Target is a widely known retailer that has millions of consumers flocking every day to the retailer to partake in the stores wonders. The Target Data Breach is now known as the largest data breach/attack surpassing the TJX data breach in 2007. “The second-biggest attack struck TJX Companies, the parent company of TJMaxx and Marshall’s, which said in 2007 that about 45 million credit cards and debit cards had been compromised.” (Timberg, Yang, & Tsukayama, 2013) The data breach occurred to Target was a strong swift kick to the guts to not only the retailer/corporation, but to employees and consumers. The December 2013 data breach, exposed Target in a way that many

Target inappropriately handled this crisis because the company waited to report the data breach until days after it initially learned about it, which gave the public the impression that Target was being dishonest. On December 15th, 2013 Target initially learned of the breach in security, and on December 19th Target confirmed the data breach to the public. In Target’s initial statement, it claimed “There is no indication that PIN numbers have been compromised on affected bank issued PIN debit cards or Target debit cards” (Steinhafel, 2013). On December 27th, Target retracted its statement, and stated, “our ongoing investigation determined that strongly encrypted PIN data was removed from our system during the data breach incident” (Target,

On November 27, 2012, 40 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen from U.S. Target stores. The public was not informed about the data breach until December 18, 2012. Target’s spokesperson, Molly Snyder, specified that only the credit and debit card numbers were stolen along with the expiration date of the cards. Furthermore, Snyder mentioned that social security number and birthdays were not accessed during the breach. During this time Target’s sales fell 4 percent and target offered their customers 10 percent discount on in-store items to get them to shop at Target. On January 10, 2013, additional 70 million customers had their personal information like phone numbers and emails stolen. Target then fired 475 employees. In April target

In between the months of November and December of 2013, the store Target and many of its customers had suffered due to a data breach. Apparently, Target tried to fix the problem before it hit the news, by reporting the breach to the Department of Justice who hired a forensic investigator. But, due to the size of the breach and the amount of people affected, Target failed to cover up the incident.

2.The video describes the circumstantial evidence found in the Nortel Hacks that showed suspicious internet activity from its CEO that had tracked his computer going from his normal Yahoo! surfing tendencies to a website in Beijing that was completely unrelated to anything he had done on the computer before.