Home Depot Breach May Be Bigger Than Target's

If you shrugged off the recent celebrity hack of private photos, along with the massive Target breach last year, here's one more punch: Home Depot is investigating a potential breach of customer data from credit and debit cards, reports Reuters. The scoop originally came from Brian Krebs of Krebs on Security, who reports that most if not all 2,200 US stores were affected and that the breach may go back to April of this year. If so, "this breach could be many times larger than Target, which had 40 million credit and debit cards stolen over a three-week period," he writes.

Krebs, it should be noted, is "consistently spot-on," observes TechCrunch. The first hint of trouble surfaced when a big batch of stolen credit and debit cards went on sale in underground markets this morning, and banks quickly zeroed in on Home Depot as the probable source. Krebs thinks the hackers are the same Russian and Ukrainian group that hit Target; the new batch is named "American Sanctions," an apparent dig at the West's current friction with Vladimir Putin. Home Depot has not confirmed a breach, only that it is investigating "unusual activity," says a spokesperson. "If we confirm that a breach has occurred, we will make sure customers are notified immediately." (More Home Depot stories.)