Posted on 11/09/2014 11:48:07 PM PST by Swordmaker
Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal published an in-depth look at The Home Depot’s recent security breach of its payment data systems, in which 56 million credit card accounts and 53 million email addresses of customers were compromised. A root cause of the security breach: a Windows vulnerability in the retailer’s main computer network.
“Once inside Home Depot’s systems after gaining credentials from the outside vendor, the hackers were able to jump the barriers between a peripheral third-party vendor system and the company’s more secure main computer network by exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system, the people briefed on the investigation said,” writes the WSJ’s Shelly Banjo.
The report claims that while Microsoft did issue a security patch after the breach began, which was installed by The Home Depot, the fix arrived too late. According to sources familiar with the investigation, the hackers already had the ability to move across The Home Depot’s systems, including its point-of-sale system, as if they were high-level employees.
The report unravels a lot of details related to how the security breach played out, with one anecdote that I found particularly interesting. Following the breach, an IT employee allegedly purchased two dozen new MacBooks and iPhones for senior executives at The Home Depot, indicating that the home-improvement retailer may have lost at least some confidence in its Microsoft-based systems.
MacBooks and iPhones have faced their fair share of security vulnerabilities (see below—Swordmaker) over the past few years, although recent studies conducted by Kaspersky Labs and similar firms have proven that both devices remain highly secure platforms in terms of protection against malware and other threats. But whether shiny new Macs and iPhones in The Home Depot’s boardroom will help it prevent another massive security breach remains to be seen.
It’s not clear to me why getting Apples for the executives is going to help anything. Was the breach due to an executive’s laptop??? Was my email address on someone’s personal machine?
My understanding is that the breach into their server occurred through Windows and they were concerned about company secrets being compromised at the upper management level in a similar manner through another Windows incursion, so they replaced the upper management computers and phones with Apple equipment which has a far less exposure profile.
Windows wasn’t homo enough for them.
D@mn straight, only queers and morons use that overpriced cr@p that Apple foists off on people. Besides My wife uses an iPhone and still the bank made her get a new card because of a Home Depot purchase. I hate Apple. Just doing the complaining that Apple FanBoys won't do.
This is so full of poop as to be insulting. Their security breach has nothing to do with operating systems, and anyone that knows security knows this is an outright lie.
What part of "A root cause of the security breach: a Windows vulnerability in the retailer’s main computer network" DO YOU FAIL TO UNDERSTAND? That was the second sentence of the lede. It was published in the Wall Street Journal. It was asserted by the forensic digital data examiners of the breach.
You can scream and shout all you want that it's an "outright lie," CodeToad, but that is what was found: The breach was made through a Windows vulnerability on Home Depot's main computer network. . .
Then give specifics about the breach itself. All too often we are treated to lies and distortions. Define “Windows vulnerability” specific to the technical issue. “Windows vulnerability” could be anything from the user configuration to an actual binary in the OS.
Until they do so, this is a BS article meant to deflect away from HD and their incompetence.
Gates is one of, if not THE, biggest backer and supporter (financial) of Common Core... enough said.
Apparently, some don’t understand how these corporate ecosystems work in technology.
Of course, the executives did not carry around millions of credit card numbers and consumer email addresses on their laptops. BUT...
The laptops basically held the “keys” to such information on corporate servers and other data repositories.
The laptops served as a sort of keyring to get into the “vault”. So with the laptops compromised (or another aspect of interconnect running some version of Windows), the keys were then made available to the hackers to the bigger prize held in slightly more secure settings (though nothing is secure when you give out the keys).
If, as some are assuming in this case, that the gateway to the data breach was with executive laptops, then Apple hardware replacing the Windows-based hardware would indeed provide a slight security advantage. But as others have mentioned - no hardware or software will totally protect from stupidity or from abject criminals.
> Gates is one of, if not THE, biggest backer and supporter (financial) of Common Core... enough said.
Why would Gates do this? He’s no longer one of us. He lives sheltered in the state of Washington in a 66K + sq ft home partially hidden back in the woods with extensive security features and probably has armed bodyguards on call that are available as needed. News articles indicate that he embraces all things NWOish. He has no need to be “American” anymore unless it suits his needs and has eliteists who call themselves civil servants that are supposed to draw paychecks less than $200K yet always seem to be worth multimillions for some reason because they feed at the trough of his donations.
If any programmer were to invent a platform that could seriously compete with Windows and their Office Suite they could become very rich right now.
Undoubtedly. From a large 'go away' buy-out from Gates.
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