After two month of investigation the reason for the Home Depot data breach appears to be clear: Cyber criminals used stolen credentials from a third-party vendor to enter the Home Depot network. In a report by Mike Davin from November 7, 2014 one could read some more details: ‘The hackers then acquired elevated rights that allowed them to navigate portions of Home Depot’s network and to deploy “unique, custom-built malware” on its self-checkout systems in the U.S. and Canada.’

It’s a complete mystery to me why companies do not secure the access to business critical data with Two Factor Authentication. TFA would severely hamper such data breaches. I am not overly surprised that the attacker could acquire elevated privileges.

But what really worries me is that the attackers we able deploy software to the company’s point-of-sales devices. It is quite obvious that the software deployment process is not sufficiently secured and could be easily tampered.

From my point of view Home Depot’s IT should invest some time in threat modelling of the software deployment process to avoid such incidents in future. In particular the strict enforcement of the Separation-of-Duties principle will prevent unplanned deployment of critical Software.

Have a good day!