Target in massive Customer Data Breach

This is inexcusable.

Target said Thursday that the credit and debit card information of as many as 40 million customers was compromised over three weeks of the holiday shopping season — one of the largest breaches ever of American consumer data.

The breach, which extended to almost all Target stores in the United States, captured data stored on the magnetic stripes of the cards that customers swipe at the cash register, according to Krebs on Security, a respected data security blog.

Krebs, which broke the story Wednesday, cited sources from two top card companies.

Target said that the information compromised included customer names, card numbers, expiration dates and the short verification codes known as CVVs — everything an attacker would need to create a counterfeit card.

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/40-million-credit-debit-card-accounts-may-be-hit-data-2D11775203