Hackers Caught

As described in this article from cnn.com, the justice department has issued 11 indictments for stealing more than 40 million credit and debit card numbers. Unsurprisingly given the nature of the crime the suspects are from all over the world - three from the U.S., three from Estonia, two from Ukraine, two from China, and one from Belarus. The arrests are the result of years of investigation, showing both the difficulty of making arrests in cases of international card fraud, and the potential of dedicated police work.

One question raised by the article is how many more people were involved. The article says that "[t]he 41 million credit and debit numbers were used internationally," and also says that the suspects are accused of hacking into the TJX network. There's something of a disconnect between the numbers and the crime. As I mentioned here, depending on whose numbers you go by, the TJX breach involved either 94 or 45 million records. Thus, if the indicted suspects really were behind the breach, and actually did steal only 41 million numbers, it implies that they aren't the only ones who were taking numbers from TJX. Still, aside from that small detail, the indictments appear to be happy news. Hopefully the police got the right people, and will continue to do so in the future.