The massive five-month data breach that hit Home Depot affected as many as 56 million payment cards, the home improvement retail giant said Thursday, in a hack even bigger than the mammoth breach that hit Target during the holiday season last year. The do-it-yourself retail giant said that criminals using malware had outpaced the company's own efforts to beef up its security by fully encrypting its payment terminal data. The five-month breach affected payment systems in Home Depot's brick-and-mortar stores in the U.S. and Canada but did not appear to have affected purchases made on its website.
