Shares of Home Depot Inc., the largest home-improvement chain, fell the most in almost five months Tuesday after the company said it was working with banks and law enforcement to investigate a possible data breach.
"We're looking into some unusual activity," Paula Drake, a spokesman for the Atlanta-based company, said in an emailed statement. "We are aggressively gathering facts at this point while working to protect customers. If we confirm that a breach has occurred, we will make sure customers are notified immediately."
Brian Krebs, the independent journalist who uncovered a hacker attack at Target Corp. last year, reported that a "massive" batch of stolen credit- and debit-card information went on sale this morning. There's evidence that the cards are linked to Home Depot stores, Krebs said on his website, KrebsOnSecurity.
Home Depot shares dropped 2 percent to $91.15 at the close in New York, the largest decline since April 7. The stock has climbed 11 percent this year.
"The criminals are getting smarter faster than the companies," said Jaime Katz, an analyst for Morningstar Inc. in Chicago. "If it is something on the scale of Target, there is obviously significant concern."
Hackers probably installed malicious software capable of stealing bank account information, names, card expiration dates and other data on Home Depot's point-of-sale cash registers, said Trey Ford, global security strategist for Boston-based software security company Rapid7 LLC. The incident is probably another example of hackers relying on so-called Backoff malware, which the Secret Service estimates has been used to target more than 1,000 businesses over the past year.
"This is effectively a keystroke logger," said Ford, who doesn't have direct knowledge of the Home Depot attack. "It's capturing all that stuff that comes in."
Target, the Minneapolis-based discount chain, has shown how devastating a data breach can be to a retailer. Hackers struck the company last year during the height of the Christmas shopping season, tarnishing its reputation and hampering sales.
The suspected Home Depot breach may have occurred in late April or early May and could encompass all 2,200 of the company's stores in the U.S., Krebs said. That means it could be larger than the Target incident, he said.
The attack may have been performed by the same group of hackers that infiltrated Target, possibly as retribution for the U.S. and Europe placing sanctions on Russia, Krebs said. Stolen cards were marketed on a website by the hackers as "European Sanctions" and "American Sanctions," he said.
Business on 09/03/2014