Target Retail Fraud Case Study

The biggest retail hacking in U.S. history started on its course early in the 2013 holiday season, just days prior to Thanksgiving. Cyber criminals made their way into Target’s payment and security systems and planed their attack on all of Target’s 1,797 stores. By November 30, 2013 all of the necessary traps and steps where in order to steal millions of customers card numbers and personal information. All for except one key ingredient, this was a data exit malware program. In the months prior to this attack, Target had actually planned and prepared for this sort of situation. Roughly six months prior to this attack, Target had begun to install malware detecting software from FireEye at a cost of $1.6 million dollars. FireEye is extremely

This extraction malware would move the stolen data to several different locations in the U.S and then onto the hackers computers in Russia. As the malware was being uploaded into Target’s system FireEye spotted it, and the team in Bangalore sent out a red alert warning to Target headquarters. What happened next is hard to fathom. Shockingly, Target took absolutely no action in response to this emergency. For an unknown reason, Minneapolis simply sat idly by and did nothing.

In testimony before Congress Target stated that they only went back to investigate the breach after notification from the Department of Justice in mid-December. However what wasn’t publicly released is the fact that from November 30 to December 2 Target’s computer logs showed blatant alerts for FireEye of malware presence. These alarms were so obvious that it would have been absolutely impossible to miss. If Target had responded that this moment, this theft would have never happened. The question is why in the world would Target with all of these warning and clues not do anything.