US retailer Target has suffered a massive data breach that exposed the credit card details of up to 40 million customers, the company said on Thursday.
Target said that the stolen data included the names and credit card details of all customers who swiped their cards at stores between November 27 and December 15.
Target did not say how the breach occurred but said that it had fixed the vulnerability and was co-operating with authorities.
There are about 1,800 Target stores in the US and Canada and the reported data breach is one of the largest on record. Data from some 130 million cards was stolen from payment processor Heartland Payment Systems in 2009, while 100 million users accounts were exposed on Sony’s Playstation Network in 2011 and 46 million accounts were compromised by retailer TJX in 2006.
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.