Home Depot, which calls itself “the world’s largest home improvement retailer,” can add a new distinction. It is now the scene of the world’s largest known theft of consumer credit card information. A cyberattack has put at risk the data of about 56 million customers between April and September. This exceeds the approximately 40 million credit accounts breached at Target stores, the previous all-time high.

In the same week that Home Depot revealed the loss, the Senate Armed Services Committee reported on a year-long investigation that found Chinese hackers penetrated computer systems run by contractors for the U.S. military agency responsible for the transport of troops and material on at least 20 occasions. Private airlines provide more than 90 percent of the Pentagon’s passenger movement capability and more than a third of its bulk-cargo capability, according to the panel. This is the kind of computer network that the military would not like to share with a potential adversary.

The crisis of security on the Internet is real and deepening. The vulnerabilities threaten everyone who holds a credit card, visits a doctor or uses social media. Yet the national response has been alarmingly and inexplicably passive.

The thieves, spies and warriors in cyberspace need to be defeated, and it is long past time to get started figuring out how.


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