The Home Depot Hack was Easy

• By Matt Holden
• Sep 10, 2014

Home Depot is the victim of a recent security hack, an attack that is almost identical to the same one Target faced eight months ago. This attack includes a piece of malware that affected point-of-sale systems and led to the information of millions of customers being compromised.

According to one report, this isn’t due to a mastermind hack squad. Instead, Andrew Avanessian, vice president of professional services at the security firm Avecto said, “They didn’t actually do anything clever.”

It’s clear that these similar attacks highlight a serious issue in the defense of these systems. Something as simple as a human falling for a phishing attack can open the door for strains of malware. Companies can usually get rid of this, but hackers are constantly a step ahead.

“This is a testament to just how advanced the criminals’ technology has become and how, even though similar strains have been discovered, they still weren’t able to recognize it. That’s a pretty big deal,” said identify theft expert Robert Siciliano in the report.

Siciliano estimates that everyone’s data has been compromised at least three or four times by now, and recommends that people set up notifications for transactions on their accounts in order to keep tabs on their funds.