
Target removes CEO in wake of cyber attack - wiremine
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/05/us-target-ceo-idUSBREA440BD20140505
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daphneokeefe
Here's a link to USA Today.
[http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/05/05/targ...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/05/05/target-
ceo-steps-down/8713847/)

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jessaustin
Thanks for the link!

 _In the months since [the hack was found], Target adopted a faster timeline
for switching to more secure chip-based credit and debit cards, and the
payment terminals that accept them. As part of the $100 million effort, Target
announced last week that it all of its store-branded cards would be reissued
as MasterCard chip-and-pin cards in 2015._

This will only help customers who have such cards, which is... visitors from
Europe? Anyone else? A more valuable feature for the new terminals would be
code signing for firmware updates.

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brightghost
Target has their own line of credit and debit cards which they push
aggressively in-store, I assume these plans pertain to those.

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raverbashing
Correct, it's written in the quoted passage

"all of its store-branded cards would be reissued as MasterCard chip-and-pin
cards"

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TheCapn
To be fair, I fail to see what sacking a CEO has to do with a technologically
negligent practice. Yes, their Canadian expansion was botched but it seems
like there might just be bad media reporting trying to link everything back to
their very public fuckup? Wouldn't the CIO be more liable for such faults as a
massive data breach? I do see the small comments in the article regarding CIO
upheaval but unless there was some evidence of the CEO actively undermining
security in the information sector of the company is this just another case of
chief officers canning the guy to save face?

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untog
That's one of the curious roles of CEO. If things go wrong, you resign. Helps
the company draw a line under the incident and show that they are "moving on",
even when it's complete nonsense.

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JumpCrisscross
A big part of the CEO's role is to manage investor confidence. Confidence in a
company's vision, execution, and communication underwrites its equity value.
Replacing a CEO who has lost the market's confidence is more than ceremonial.

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unclebucknasty
Not, it's not ceremonial. But, I don't think anyone used that term, except
you. The parent said it was _nonsense_ , which is true.

Sure, it's part of the CEO's job to inspire confidence, but what's nonsense is
that virtually any CEO would be responsible for any single tech-vulnerability
down the line.

So, it may well be that investors expect that, which would mean that the
nonsense is on their part. And, perhaps Target is simply responding to that
nonsense, but it's still nonsense.

Said another way, it's not ceremonial if it matters. But, it is nonsense that
it would matter.

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imjustsaying
As is frequently done with headlines and business/financial news snippets, a
one-liner reason is given, possibly completely irrelevant to the level of
change.

'Kcots Stock closed 10% lower today on increasing speculation that Kcots Stock
may have been intentionally named like a pallendrome.'

I didn't read the article as I got paywalled.

However I noticed that 'Target CEO Resigns Over Data Breach' was the headline
introduced by the OP, and not the one in the WSJ.

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LandoCalrissian
They also lost a ton of money in their expansion into Canada, so it's not just
the data breach.

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Marcus316
It's funny ... their big push into the Canadian market brought a few stores to
my area ... almost everything in the store is priced higher than the
alternative stores here. I don't see much advantage to them, and have bought
nothing from them.

On the flip side of that coin, one of the Zellers locations that closed down
due to Target coming in has reopened again. Target never moved into their
lease, so they are still Zellers ...

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skwirl
Even in the United States, Target is priced higher than Wal-Mart. People still
go to Target. It's viewed as a somewhat higher class store than Wal-Mart.

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mbesto
Target is designed for women - clean, nice colors, lighting, friendliness.

Source - My dad is a retired sales rep in that market.

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oalders
I'm not a woman, but to me the fact that it's clean and bright makes it much
less soul-crushing to shop retail.

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dang
We changed the url from
[http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230341710...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303417104579543461881354816)

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dredmorbius
How about a simple ban on paywalled sites?

Those with ready workarounds (NY Times / cookies) aren't so bad. WSJ loses on
both its editorial bias and paywall. Financial Times, though often quality
reporting, isn't worth the bother of links either.

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dang
I agree that we should prefer non-paywalled links where possible, but I don't
want to risk missing the important, solid articles that do occasionally come
up at those sites.

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j-b
The link appears to be behind a pay-wall.

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ghshephard
As always with WSJ, take 3 seconds and type the title into Google to bypass
the pay-wall.

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daphneokeefe
I'd really rather not be raising their page read metrics.

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ghshephard
Because all information should be totally free? Newspapers, Television Shows,
Movies, Music, Software, Books, Comics, Magazines, etc... Nobody should ever
charge money for content, and they must be punished if they attempt to do so?

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daphneokeefe
I'm not the one advocating "stealing" by defeating the paywall here! I'm
suggesting NOT trying to gain unauthorized access. As is usually the case,
there are plenty of alternate sources for this information, which derives
largely from a press release.

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snsr
> I'm suggesting NOT trying to gain unauthorized access

In what way is accessing WSJ via Google's search results unauthorized?

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DanBC
What does WSJ's AUP/TOS say?

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middus
Don't know. Are they behind a paywall?

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DanBC
No. They put them in front of the paywall so people can read and agree to them
before subscribing.

They call them "subscriber terms of use", but the TOS claims to cover people
who are not subscribed.

I mention TOS and AUP because it seems some US courts will see this as what
makes access authorised or not.

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danielweber
I had a boss who insisted that companies would fail over data breaches like TJ
Maxx's. I doubted him, and still do, but this news gives him a couple more
percentage points of likelihood.

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jonlucc
Well there is still a long list of breaches that didn't demand a sacrifice
[1]. Sony, Adobe, Steam, etc.

[1]
[http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/worlds-...](http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/worlds-
biggest-data-breaches-hacks/)

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fragsworth
It's odd to me that they have to take the blame for a disaster that was caused
by the terrible security of how credit cards fundamentally work.

It is impossible to secure credit cards. They are the keys to your money in
plain text. PCI is hell to comply with because of this, and doesn't even solve
the problem because you still have to store them in plain text.

Target would be 100% right to blame the credit card industry for the disaster,
but it wouldn't go over well with the public because the public does not
understand security.

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bryne
Prepare to go through this discussion again in two years after chip-and-pin's
expensive rollout doesn't prevent or deter online CC theft, despite everyone
having to get fancy new cards from their banks.

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crazytony
That took a long time. I guess the last of his options were up about 12 hours
ago.

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ArkyBeagle
I was working on credit/debit card auth. 20+ years ago, and we wondered then
why it didn't go all smart card. That division was housed with the smart card
group, and Europe was going smart card. Debit card security was pretty good at
the time, but this was all a long time ago.

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toomuchtodo
> and we wondered then why it didn't go all smart card.

Because nobody wants to pay for it; its cheaper to push the cost onto the
merchant.

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KevinEldon
Target has a coupon app called Cartwheel. You get a certain number of coupon
slots that you can fill with pretty good deals. When you go to Target you scan
your phone at checkout and it knows what coupons you have selected and reduces
the price of the products you purchased. The more you spend with Cartwheel
coupons the more slots you get to fill up. My wife thinks this is great. She
saves us a lot of money and its kinda fun for her to find and pick savings
based on what she wants. Target is making a fucking killing on this. We shop
there frequently (it's cleaner than the local Wal-Mart too) and Target is
mining our data and influencing our purchases with their app. I can't help
like being a product when I'm getting decent savings and deals I want even if
store I'm working with is making it work for them too.

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GFK_of_xmaspast
How much did Target actually lose as a result of the breach, and how much of
this talk is just post hoc ergo propter hoc?

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pessimizer
Probably unmeasurable. I was a victim of credit card fraud because of the
Target breach, and though ultimately I didn't lose a dime, I didn't step into
Target (the closest major retailer to my apartment) during the entire
Christmas season. Also, since then, if I have the urge to buy something at
Target, and I'm not carrying enough cash to pay for it, I choose another
store. That can't be good.

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atoponce
Paywall. TC;DR

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fsckin
Time to write three letters.

