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Comment by hellbanTHIS | Hacker News Reader

I got into an argument about that with the guy at the Home Depot paint counter today. I blamed the hack on Home Depot probably running XP on their POS machines and he blamed the banks not doing something that they do in Europe, I'm assuming it's this EMV chip because it sounded like he was repeating something he was told.

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Why on earth would you argue this issue with the guy at the paint counter? He clearly has nothing to do with either the cause or any remedy they might decide to offer.

No kidding. Until now, I'd have been hard-pressed to imagine any sentence that started with "I got into an argument with the guy at the Home Depot paint counter", but didn't end with "because my paint color didn't match".

All the computers for the paint mixing machines in every Home Depot were screwed up today, which brought up the topic of the hack and he got excited when I suggested it was probably outdated software on the point of sales machines that was to blame.

The interesting part to me was it sounded like the managers explained to them that it was all the bank's fault. Not that Home Depot was too cheap and lazy to update their software. And ya got to talk about something while the paint's shakin

Do you have reason to believe that Windows 7 instead of Windows XP would have prevented this attack? It sounds like weak credentials and overall lax security are more to blame.

edit: Also, keep in mind that some retailers are running POSReady 2009 / POSReady 7, which may look just like Windows XP at first glance.

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