March 30, 2010
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News: JC Penney Also Targeted By Hacker
Shortly after Wet Seal, the women's clothing and accessory retailer, reported that the company had been targeted by one of the largest credit card and personal information breaches in history, JC Penney also stepped up to say it too had been a target. JC Penney is a mid range retailer specializing in apparel for the whole family and is based out of Plano, Texas. The company operates stores in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. The company fought to remain anonymous as court documents referred the it as Company A. Representatives of the company argued that releasing information showing that JC Penney had also been a target of the credit card data breach would serve no purpose because it had happened over two years ago. JC Penney felt that such disclosure would only cause "confusion and alarm" among its credit card customers.
A number of major retailers were victimized by the hacker infamous young hacker, Albert Gonzalez who was recently sentenced to two consecutive prison terms of 20 years each for his role in the theft of over 130 million credit card numbers. Gonzalez hacked into the systems of the credit card processor, Heartland Payment Systems who managed the payment processing for a number of large retailers. Although JC Penney had managed to keep its name out of the media as one of the hacker's target, an article released on the website of StorefrontBacktalk that mentioned JC Penney as one Gonzalez's target.
Prosecutors in New Jersey had agreed to keep the identity of JC Penney anonymous referring to it as Company A; however, after the case was moved to Massachusetts, things changed. Massachusetts' prosecutors held a different perspective. They felt that credit card customers want to know when their information has been compromised in order to take action to safeguard their identity. The release comes just shortly after Wet Seal who had been referred to as Company B in court documents also announced it had been a target and after Gonzalez's sentencing. Now that Gonzalez is securely behind bars, Americans can expect to hear of more companies that had been targeted by the breach.