Designing Security for APIs

Abstract

Just a few days after everyone celebrated Thanksgiving Day in 2013, someone who fooled the Target defense system installed a malware in its security and payment system. It was the peak time in business for any retailer in the United States. While the customers were busy in getting ready for Christmas, the malware which was sitting in the Target payment system silently captured all the credit card information from the cashier’s terminal and stored them in a server, which was under the control of the attacker. Forty million credit card numbers were stolen in this way from 1797 Target stores around the country. It was a huge breach of trust and credibility from the retailer, and in March 2015 a federal judge in St. Paul, Minnesota, approved a $10 million offer by Target to settle the lawsuit against the data breach.