data has been compromised. in addition, based on our communications with financial institutions, they have also seen no indications that any pin data was compromised. so they didn t really say anything that wasn t true. why did that statement change today? is it possible they didn t know? or was it an attempt to hide the extent of the damage? what happens in these situations is you learn as you go. when they find out their point of sale systems had been compromised, they assumed it was what we call track data or track two data which come off the back of the magnetic strip. what we learned is the sophistication the hackers used at the point of sale systems, they started grabbing the devices, the information from the devices which is the debit card pins. as these response scenarios come out, they learn more and more. they re saying one thing and then next day they re changing the issue. they need to find the facts out
we reached out to them yesterday and asked what the deal was with pins. here s what they told us. they said to us yesterday, to date, there s no evidence that unencrypted pin data was compromised. no evidence is what they told us yesterday. they also added, based on our communications with financial institutions, they have not seen any indication that any pin data was compromised. you can see how cleverly worded that was. i was talking to a hacker, and i said, should people be worried royalty now? he said there s two things you should understand. first, target doesn t store the encryption key in their system, so that s good news, and they have one of the more robust type of systems so it looks good for target right now. it is possible these hackers could eventually get the numbers, but they would have to be very sophisticated to do that. for full disclosure, i
hi there, i m brianna keilar in washington. wolf blitzer is off today. we ll be starting with more fall out from the target hacking scandal and an admission from the retailer. target now says debit card pin numbers were stolen during that data breach. our zain asher joining me now from the new york stock exchange. she has been following the story for days now. this is a bit of an about face. hi, it does look like it. target now coming out saying that pin data was stolen but they are emphasizing the pin dat data was encrypted and don t believe they can unscramble the pin data. target told us yesterday something slightly different. part of their statement yesterday they said to date, there is no evidence that unencrypted pin data was compromised. i mean it s not necessarily a lie burks they certainly did omit the truth. there was definitely some corporate spin announcing that in fact, encrypted pin data was
unemployment benefits as well. so certainly a disconnect between the rich and the less well off. joe? we also learned some information today about that target credit card hack. what are you hearing on that? reporter: right. so hearing from target today that they have confirmed that in that hack, pin data was actually stolen but target is also saying at the same time that that data was heavily encrypted and they don t believe that the hackers will actually be able to unscramble the pin numbers. so target at this point really just sort of desperate to salvage any piece of trust they have left with consumers so they did get pin data, but the data was heavily scrambled. that s what they re saying. what s interesting is what target told us yesterday. they told us something very different yesterday. they told us yesterday that to date, there is actually no evidence that unencrypted pin data was compromised. now today they are actually coming out and saying that pin data was compromised b
well, there is a lot of blame going around. there s a lot of finger pointing which is somewhat interesting. some of the retailers are blaming the shippers like ups and fed ex. ups in some cases sent customers e-mails saying look, we didn t receive the package in time, it s not our fault. so there does seem to be plenty of blame going around but at the end of the day, i think the customer s really going to hold the retailer who they ordered from responsible. and target, they say there s no evidence of unencrypted pin data being compromised when 40 million credit and debit cards were stolen, but are we any closer to knowing who did it? well, it looks like we may be getting a little bit closer. there is a blogger out there who tracks this and he has identified a man in the ukraine who he says is selling some of these credit card this credit card data on a website, and