Major attacks on retailers cast spotlight on higher-security cards

Network breaches that occurred at Target, Neiman Marcus and other popular U.S. retailers over the holiday shopping season has turned the spotlight on the use of higher-security debit and credit cards.

[CSO’s guide to the Target data breach]

Over the weekend, Target Chief Executive Gregg Steinhafel confirmed security experts’ suspicions that the company’s point-of-sale systems had been infected with malware, which led to the theft of 40 million credit and debit card accounts and personally identifiable information for 70 million people. The data stolen did not include social security numbers.

On Friday, luxury retailer Neiman Marcus confirmed its network also had been hacked, but has yet to provide details on the amount and type of customer data stolen. Reuters reported Sunday that breaches smaller than Target’s had occurred in at least three other well-known U.S. retailers. The names of the retailers or details of the attacks were not available.

The high-profile attacks have brought to the forefront the banking and retail industry’s efforts to migrate away from current cards that use a magnetic stripe in the back to store customer data. In their place would be cards that use a computer chip and require a personal identification number (PIN).

Banks in 80 countries in Europe and Asia use so-called “chip-and-pin” cards. U.S. banks have been much slower to adopt the technology because losses from fraud were much lower than the cost of issuing new cards, as well as the expense of having retailers upgrade POS hardware and software to use the cards.

However, the size and frequency of card number thefts, starting in 2007 with the compromise of 94 million accounts from retailer TJX, has made the case for higher-security cards more compelling.

The media attention on such cases is starting to shake consumer confidence, which could lead to less credit card use and significantly add to the direct losses from fraud.

“The benefits are now there for the consumers, the banks and the retailers,” Mary Ann Miller, managing director of fraud consulting and industry relations at NICE Actimize, said. “I doubt that card losses alone would ever direct the business case in the U.S., but I think it’s definitely consumer confidence that’s driving the business case now.”

[Rising impact of Target breach indicates deeper hack into systems]

Banks plan to require retailers to accept chip-carrying cards sometime in 2015, Miller said. Gas stations will have until 2017 to outfit pumps for the new cards.

Retailers say they support the move, but need to see more commitment on the part of the banks.

“Retailers are encouraging a move to adopt the new technologies, and indeed some have already begun to do so,” Mallory Duncan, general counsel for the National Retail Federation, said. “But frankly, it’s a useless investment until the banks upgrade from their fraud-prone cards to PIN and chip.”

The more advanced cards would not have helped prevent the Target hack, which experts say likely involved a malware called a “RAM scraper.” Such malware steals transaction data from the POS terminal’s random access memory (RAM), which could also contain the customer information and PIN from a chip-based card.

“The chip card prevents me from taking your card and using it at the store,” Ron Gula, chief executive at Tenable Network Security, said.

The cards also make it much more difficult for criminals to make counterfeit cards after they have stolen card data, Miller said.

“They certainly could use the (stolen) information for card-not-present transactions on the Internet or mobile, but it would definitely limit their options at the point of sale,” Miller said.