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Fraud

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Are you the next Target?
Who here loves to shop at Target? I know I do! Recently, Target’s security was breached by two young adults located in Russia. The mastermind is Rinat Shibaev, who worked closely with a 17 year old boy named Sergey Tarasov, who was acting as his technical support (Newman, 2014). These two individuals also stole from Neiman Marcus and six other large US retailers; I’m only going to discuss the Target breech (Newman, 2014). I will discuss a little background of the two individuals, Target’s reaction to the breach, and some tips to protect you in the future.

23 year old Rinat Shabayev is the brains behind the recent cyber heist which has flooded the news lately. He developed Malware and called it “BlackPOS,” which is an effective crimeware kit. Rinat clarified that the program developed by him was not meant for any kind of data theft, but rather, the program was written for the security testing. Rinat developed the malware with the help of another programmer with anonymous identity, whom he had met online. His original plan was to sell the exploit; not to use it for malicious intent. 17 year old Sergey Tarasov took the readymate codes from him and added more features to it (Kumar, 2014).

Rinat confessed he built the crimeware malicious code but stated he had no intentions of using it. He sold “BlakPos” malware to more than 60 eastern European cybercriminals which negatively impacted from 70 to 110 million innocent consumers. They stole credit-debit cards and personal information including names, mailing addresses, email addresses and phone numbers; no social security numbers were compromised. Tarasov has yet to confess, and his involvement is alleged at this point (Kumar, 2014).

The heist took place over a 19-day period that began the day before Thanksgiving. Target identified and resolved the issue on December 15 by closing the access point the criminals used. Target’s background of security measures were set in on the day it was detected, December 15, 2013. Target is investing $5 million to address this breach, and they are starting with a group of nationally recognized and respected organizations in cybersecurity and consumer protection who immediately launched a campaign to educate consumers about cybersecurity and the dangers of phishing scams.

To further this effort, Target is using three trusted organizations: National Cyber Forensics and Training Alliance, National Cyber Security Alliance and the Better Business Bureau (Target, 2014). This effort exemplifies that approach (Target, 2014). Additionally, Target is also offering one free year of credit monitoring and identity theft protection to all Target guests for peace of mine and to advance public education and cybersecurity (Target, 2013).

Obviously there is no fail proof way to protect against identity theft, but here are several preventative ideas listed by Help Net Security: monitor your credit closely, keep records of your financial transactions, install security software, use an updated Web browser, be cautious with email attachments, store sensitive data securely, shred documents, protect your personally identifiable information, and stay alert of the latest scams (Earley, 2010).

While in this case there was a man in his early twenties and a boy in his teens behind the heist, there are millions of criminals creating malicious software every day. I’m not saying live in fear or never use your cards again. Simply think about how much information you provide when you swipe your card. Thank you and I hope you learned something from this today.

References

Earley, E. (2010). How to Prevent Identity Theft. Help Net Security. Retrieved from http://www.net-security.org/article.php?id=1366 Kumar, M. (2014). 23-Year-old Russian Hacker confessed to be original author of BlackPOS
Malware. The Hacker News. Retrieved from http://thehackernews.com/2014/01/23-year-old-russian-hacker-confessed-to.html#

Newman, L. H. (2014). A 17-Year-Old Was Behind the Target, Neiman Marcus Credit Card
Hacks. Future Tense. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/01/20/target_neiman_marcus_credit_card_number_hacks_were_caused_by_a_17_year_old.html

Target. (2014). Target to invest $5 million in cybersecurity coalition. Target. Retrieved from
https://corporate.target.com/discover/article/Target-to-invest-5-million-in-cybersecurity-coalit

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