Information Security News: TJX: At least 45.7M card numbers stolen

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/business/16990546.htm

Associated Press
March 29, 2007

BOSTON - More than two months after first disclosing that hackers 
accessed customers' financial data from its computers, discount retailer 
TJX Cos. has revealed that information from at least 45.7 million credit 
and debit cards was stolen over an 18-month period.

In a regulatory filing that gives the first detailed account of the 
breach initially disclosed in January, the owner of T.J. Maxx, 
Marshall's and other stores in North America and the United Kingdom also 
said another 455,000 customers who returned merchandise without receipts 
had their personal data stolen, including driver's license numbers.

The data that was stolen covers transactions dating as far back as 
December 2002, TJX said in the filing Wednesday with the Securities and 
Exchange Commission.

TJX spokeswoman Sherry Lang did not immediately return a telephone 
message from The Associated Press seeking comment late Wednesday.

But Lang told The Boston Globe, which first reported the filing 
Wednesday night, that about 75 percent of the compromised cards either 
were expired or had data from their magnetic stripes masked, meaning the 
data was stored as asterisks, rather than numbers.

Lang said the extent of the damage may never be known because of the 
methods used by the intruder. Much of the transaction data was deleted 
by TJX in the normal course of business between the time of the thefts 
and the time they were discovered, the filing said, making it impossible 
to know how many card numbers were obtained.

"There's a lot we may never know and it's one of the difficulties of 
this investigation," Lang said. "It's why this has taken this long and 
why it's been so tedious. It's painstaking."

Avivah Litan, vice president of research and advisory company Gartner 
Inc., told the Globe the TJX breach is "the biggest card heist ever."

"This was obviously done over a long period of time, in many locations," 
she said. "It's done considerable damage."

Police charged six people in Florida last week with using credit card 
numbers stolen from a TJX database to buy about $1 million in 
merchandise with gift cards.

In Wednesday's filing, TJX said for the first time that Dec. 18, 2006, 
was the date it first learned that there was suspicious software on its 
computer system.

TJX said it believes hackers invaded its systems in July 2005, on later 
dates in 2005 and also from mid-May 2006 to mid-January 2007. The 
company said no customer information was stolen after Dec. 18, one day 
before it hired General Dynamics Corp. and IBM Corp. to investigate. By 
Dec. 21, those investigators determined that the computer systems had 
been breached and that an intruder remained on the systems.

TJX said it notified federal authorities Dec. 22, and on Jan. 3, TJX 
officials and Secret Service agents met with banks and payment card and 
check processing companies to discuss the computer intrusion.

The company issued a news release Jan. 17 disclosing the breach but did 
not say how much data was stolen.

Framingham-based TJX is facing an investigation by the Federal Trade 
Commission and lawsuits from individuals and banks accusing it of 
failing to do enough to safeguard private data and of delaying 
disclosure of the problem.

The company said in Wednesday's filing that its forensic investigation 
of the intrusion is ongoing and it is continuing to work to strengthen 
and protect its computer systems.

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ON THE NET 
TJX Cos.: http://www.tjx.com


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