As you might have heard, a report from last week revealed that the Home Depot hack did not involve just credit cards, but email addresses too. While it might seem trivial, obtaining email address could lead to phishing, which in turn could lead to financial losses especially if sensitive information has been shared under the impression that the hacker could be someone posing from their bank.
That being said, is there anyone to blame for the hack, besides the hackers? Well according to Home Depot (via 9to5Mac), it seems that the Windows operating system could be to blame for the hack. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Once inside Home Depot’s systems after gaining credentials from the outside vendor, the hackers were able to jump the barriers between a peripheral third-party vendor system and the company’s more secure main computer network by exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system.”
The report goes on to state that Microsoft did issue a security patch after the vulnerability was made known to them, but it seems that by the time Home Depot actually managed to get their hands on the patch, it was a little too late as the hackers had already managed to worm their way into Home Depot’s system.
Now it seems that Home Depot’s a little wary about Windows to the extent where an IT employee was said to have purchased new MacBooks and iPhones for the senior executives at the company, hinting that their confidence in the Windows operating system could be waning. Of course this hardly means that OS X or iOS devices are hack/virus free, but reports about hacks/malware targeting these platforms aren’t as common.