IdentityProtectionTechnology
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Staples breach may have affected over a million credit cards
Good grief, the hacks just don't stop. Now office-supply store Staples believes that it suffered an attack that compromised some 1.16 million payment cards. Between August 10th and September 16th this year, 115 stores were afflicted by malware that "may have" grabbed cardholder names and payment information, and two stores possibly fell victim from July 20th to September 16th this year as well. The retailer isn't fully owning up to the attacks just yet, but it's offering a mea culpa all the same: free identity protection, credit reports and a host of other security services to anyone who used a card at the affected stores (PDF). And even though four Manhattan locations had reports of fraudulent payment use from this April to September without any malware or suspicious activity taking place, the outfit is extending the aforementioned benefits to customers of those stores as well.
Intel working with Symantec and Vasco for IPT, hardware-based security measures
Phishers are getting so good and so numerous that even the most technically adept of online bankers should think twice before typing in that password. Even if it's a legit site, databases can be infiltrated and passwords can be cracked. Time for something more, then. Intel is working on it, teaming up with Symantec and Vasco on what's being broadly termed Identity Protection Technology, or IPT. This tech enables a computer to, in hardware, generate a one-time password (OTP) that a compatible site could accept. That computer would have been earlier paired with the site to ensure that only authorized machines sign on. It's similar to the random generating key fobs you might need to sign on to VPN, but built in to Intel's Core i3, i5, and i7 processors. Of course, that won't help if you e-mail your credit card number to a supposed friend who's supposedly stranded in some supposedly far away land, but it's progress.
