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Home Depot says hack put 56 million credit and debit cards at risk

When Home Depot confirmed that its in-store payments systems were hacked, the one juicy morsel it didn't disclose was how many people may have been affected. Well, the company finally patched the issue and 'fessed up: some 56 million payment cards are at risk, so please keep an eye on your statements if you've shopped at a North American Home Depot between April and September. Just to put this whole thing into perspective, remember the gigantic data breach that Target got slammed with over the holidays? That time only (!) 40 million credit and debit cards were at risk, though millions more customers may have had other personal information compromised. The culprit in both cases was a bit of malware that had been introduced to the companies' payment systems, but despite earlier reports that the two strains were related, Home Depot says the stuff that hit it "had not been seen previously in other attacks".