The credit and debit card information of more than 110 million Target customers was stolen by hackers
The malware at the center of Target’s recent data breach affecting millions of customers was partly written in Russian, according to a report issued Thursday by US government authorities and cyber security researchers. The data was quietly moved around on Target’s network before it was sent to a US server, then to Russia.
The report, which was only distributed to organisations that are involved or may have been attacked, describes a sophisticated cyber attack operation authorities are calling Kaptoxa, a Russian word that comes from a piece of code in the malware.
Target said the breach occurred between November 27 and December 15 and resulted in the theft of names, mailing addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and debit and credit card data of people who shopped at the retailer during those dates.
Tens of thousands of people received an e-mail from Target. In an effort to temper the repercussions of its massive data breach, Target offered to give affected customers one year of free credit monitoring from Experian – valued at $191.