Home Depot's Possible Breach Makes What Happened at Target Look Like Practice

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- A possible data breach at Home Depot (HD) may have been much bigger than the one at Target (TGT) last year, according to security expert Brian Krebs, with malware infecting terminals at all of Home Depot's stores and data offered for sale that included stores' zip codes.

After learning of a possible breach from banks, Krebs found stolen numbers at a site called Rescator that had also offered stolen numbers from previous breaches, including the one at Target. He matched the zip codes in card numbers flagged by the banks to a list of Home Depot locations and got a 99.4% overlap.

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Home Depot said in a statement sent to TheStreet that it has been working on reports of a breach since Tuesday and that it has "no higher priority" than gathering the facts in the case. It said customers will not be held liable for fraudulent charges.The company, though, hasn't confirmed a breach. It is investigating whether a breach has occurred.

"We rate HOME DEPOT INC (HD) a BUY. This is based on the convergence of positive investment measures, which should help this stock outperform the majority of stocks that we rate. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, notable return on equity, good cash flow from operations, solid stock price performance and impressive record of earnings per share growth. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had generally high debt management risk by most measures that we evaluated."

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Home Depot's Possible Breach Makes What Happened at Target Look Like Practice