Largest Hack In U.S. History
These numbers speak for themselves:
"Over a period of two years, the hackers, still unknown, were able to download 45.7 million credit card numbers, with estimates in the Wall Street Journal article suggesting it might reach 200 million, spanning a period of more than four years. Clearly this is a big deal. Whether we shopped at these stores or not, we are all paying for this credit theft. Banks are having to reissue credit cards (this costs the banks), and investigators in eight countries are pursuing the use of these numbers (this diminishes the law enforcement available to fight other cybercrimes)."
45.7 MILLION. That's simply mind-boggling. What's even more boggling is the fact that any organization with sensitive data would be using any form of wireless technology in the first place. It's not exactly as if wireless networking technology has a reputation for being easy to break in to, but by it's very nature it makes controlling unwanted users difficult. Take banks for example. Banks have massive databases full of sensitive data (not to mention cash), but they have cameras and usually security teams in place to help protect these assets. The cameras and security systems/personnel in and of themselves are not 100% foolproof but they do allow for a reasonable degree of coverage for the property. The problem with wireless is that it doesn't necessarily stop where the property stops. Security measures should be able to account for all network ports in a business, but accounting for radio transmissions that people can't even see is a totally different matter.
