On the heels of Target Corp.’s $67 million settlement with Visa, a Minnesota judge ordered the unsealing of a 55-page court document alleging the mega retailer ignored malware warnings and delayed action on data breach alerts so as not to interrupt Cyber Monday.
According to Credit Union Times, the document was filed by attorneys on behalf of five financial institutions – including Mutual Bank in Whitman, Massachusetts – that have asked the court for class action status in a lawsuit over the massive data breach late in 2013.
Target had argued that unsealing the document would encourage further attacks and that “the plaintiffs’ mischaracterizations of the record would be widely published, and would therefore unduly annoy and embarrass Target, while also causing it reputational harm.”
According to Credit Union Times, the document said, “Once the breach began, Target ignored warnings and alerts on Nov. 24, 25, 26, 30 and Dec. 2 … Target’s own employee recognized, based on an alert, that ‘someone’s using a service account to access all the registers in one store,’ but Target failed to effectively respond and pushed off responding to alerts in favor of Cyber Monday.”
Last week, Target struck a deal with Visa to reimburse thousands of financial institutions for losses incurred during the data breach, which was ultimately determined to have originated with a phishing email opened at one of Target’s vendors. The retailer was said to be in talks with MasterCard to reach a similar settlement after banks and credit unions rejected a proposed $19 million settlement earlier this year.




