If you’ve shopped at Target between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15, chances are good this applies to you. Yeesh.
Investigators believe the data was obtained via software installed on machines that customers use to swipe magnetic strips on their cards when paying for merchandise at Target stores…
I wonder how they got access to the credit card swipers. All somehow programmable remotely? Astonishing.
The primary security model of those devices is limited access and obscurity. If you can steal one then you eliminate both as you have plenty of time to reverse engineer it. There’s probably a bug in the scanning code that allowed them to exploit a stack overflow with a specially formatted magstripe.
How do you steal a card machine from a busy checkout area? You don’t you take it from the portrait studio, pharmacy, electronics, eyewear or another low-traffic, secluded area.
In Europe it’s all chipcards. Much more difficult to skim than the magnetic swipe strip.