Background

• Near the end of November of 2013, Target Corporation was hit with an alert of a fissure in their network of crucial transaction data caused by a virus known as BlackPOS, also known as Kaptoxa. According to Antone Gonsalves of ITworld.com (2014), "BlackPOS was designed by a Russian teenager to steal credit- and debit-card data from retailers' electronic payment systems." The young creator of BlackPOS was successful in stealing this valuable information from 40 million credit-debit card holders (D'innocenzio 2014), making it the largest breach in history to date.
  
  

• That is, until early this past September of 2014, in which Home Depot was targeted by a foreign intruder who managed to gain access to information from 56 million buyers in a majority of the Home Depot chains in the United States and in Canada (D'innocenzio 2014). Since these breaches were discovered, the United States Secret Service and other private IT companies have been investigating the matter, closely analyzing the structures of the databases of both retailers in order to pinpoint the exact areas where protection is necessary.