Fergie's Tech Blog

TJX Hacker Charged with Heartland, Hannaford Breaches

Kim Zetter writes on Threat Level:

The constellation of hacks connected to the TJX hacker is growing.

Albert “Segvec” Gonzalez, a former Secret Service informant who is already awaiting trial over his involvement in the TJX hack, has been indicted by a federal grand jury in New Jersey, along with two unnamed Russia-based conspirators, with hacking into Heartland Payment Systems, the New Jersey based card processing company, as well as Hannaford Brothers, 7-Eleven, Inc, and two unnamed national retailers, according to the indictment unsealed Monday.

Prosecutors say they’re investigating other breaches and have not ruled out Gonzalez’s involvement in even more intrusions.

“[The fact that] we’re not seeing a huge array of hackers capable of doing this, but rather a more select group, demonstrates that there is a level of sophistication involved in these hacks,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Erez Liebermann from the Justice Department’s New Jersey district office.

According to the court document, the hackers stole more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers from Heartland and Hannaford combined, which authorities believe constitutes the largest data breach and identity theft case ever prosecuted in the U.S. But these are just the latest in a string of high-profile breaches that have been connected to Gonzalez.

posted by Fergie @ 8/17/2009 12:51:00 PM