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Home Depot Blames Windows for Their Massive Security Hack

dgstorm

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In case you missed it, Home Depot is the latest company to be embroiled in a massive hacking scandal like the Target fiasco from last year. Just a few weeks ago, Home Depot revealed that their database was breached by hackers resulting in the theft of over 56 million credit cards and over 53 million emails.

They recently came out blaming an executive's Windows machine for the data breach, and the company quickly purchased a bunch of MacBooks and iPhones for their executives to "fix" the issue. Here's a quote with more of the details,

On September 2nd, the Secret Service told Home Depot that hackers were already selling credit card numbers on the black market, which were traced back to Home Depot.

The company managed to buy some of those credit cards and started its investigation, discovering a few days later that malware had been deleted from a store computer. At that point, unsure about what information had been compromised, Home Depot “bought two dozen new, secure iPhones and MacBooks for senior executives, who referred to their new devices as ‘Bat phones.’”

It’s not clear what vulnerability in Windows the hackers exploited, but Microsoft patched it after the breach began. However, that was too late to stop the Home Depot hackers, who “were able to move throughout Home Depot’s systems and over to the company’s point-of-sale systems as if they were Home Depot employees with high-level permissions,” after using the vulnerability to move from “a peripheral third-party vendor system and the company’s more secure main computer network.” ~ BGR

Perhaps their security protocols may be more to blame than the particular OS on the hacked device. What do you think?
 
It's probably a combination of poor security procedures and vulnerable computers.
 
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