Reports: Home Depot Probes Potential Data Breach

(RTTNews) - Home Depot Inc. (HD) is working with banks and law enforcement agencies to investigate a potential breach of customer credit and debit card data from its systems, according to media reports on Tuesday.

The home improvement retailer reportedly said it was looking into "some unusual activity" and if a breach has occurred, it will notify customers immediately.

The potential breach at Home Depot will be the latest in a string of recent hacking attacks on retailers including Target Corp. (TGT), Neiman Marcus, Michaels, Sally Beauty Holdings Inc. (SBH), P. F. Chang's and United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS).

Security website KrebsonSecurity earlier reported about the potential data breach at Home Depot.

"Multiple banks say they are seeing evidence that Home Depot stores may be the source of a massive new batch of stolen credit and debit cards that went on sale this morning in the cybercrime underground," according to the security website.

KrebsonSecurity reported that the perpetrators of this apparent breach might be the same group of Russian and Ukrainian hackers responsible for the data breaches at Target, Sally Beauty and P.F. Chang's, among others.

The breach at Home Depot is believed to be "many times larger" than the breach at Target, which had 40 million credit and debit cards stolen over a three-week period.

Target, the second biggest discount-store operator in U.S., had reported a massive data breach that compromised personal data of millions of customers in the last holiday shopping season. That breach is believed to have affected 110 million customers.

Target initially said that 40 million customers were exposed, but later admitted that anywhere from 70 million to 110 million shoppers were at risk. The stolen data includes names, mailing addresses, phone numbers or email addresses.

Meanwhile, Boston-based law firm Block & Leviton LLP, said in a statement that it has commenced an investigation into the credit card data breach at Home Depot. The law firm's investigation seeks to determine, among other things, whether Home Depot acted negligently or otherwise breached any duties owed to its customers.

U.S. credit card companies have been urged to switch from magnetic strip cards to the more secure chip technology used in Europe and Canada. Target is spending $100 million to put the chip-enabled technology in place, with the goal of fully implementing the new cards by early 2015, six months ahead of schedule.

HD closed Tuesday's trading at $91.15, down $1.88 or 2.02 percent on a volume of 20.75 million shares. However, in after-hours, the stock gained $0.63 or 0.69 percent to $91.78.