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The holiday season data breach at Target that hit more than 70 million consumers was part of a wide and highly skilled international hacking campaign that's "almost certainly" based in Russia. That's according to a report prepared for federal and private investigators by Dallas-based cybersecurity firm iSight Partners.

And the fraudsters are so skilled that sources say at least a handful of other retailers have been compromised.

"The intrusion operators displayed innovation and a high degree of skill," the iSight report says.

The report doesn't say specifically how Target's network was breached but says that a virus was injected into the retail giant's credit card swiping machines, and that malware allowed hackers to collect data from the magnetic stripes on payment cards. The problem for the security companies hired to protect retailers is, according to iSight, that the malware the bad guys are using can't be detected by anti-virus software.

Who are these guys? Well, it's all part of an underground market that's been running for years — Planet Money featured this dark credit card underworld in 2011 — and the hackers writing data-stealing code are getting more sophisticated than ever.

"There's already a lot of breaches related to the Target breach that aren't being disclosed," says Avivah Litan, a retail industry analyst for Gartner. "The chances that we'll see another big breach like this are probably 80 percent."

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Security Experts Say Data Thieves Are Getting Harder To Fight

When relocating to a new country, it's important to establish routines and traditions. My ritual here in London is spending an hour on the phone with the bank every day.

It's a strange thing about 2014 — we've got one collective foot planted squarely in the 21st century, while the other is stuck in back in the 19-something-or-others.

My email, Facebook, and Twitter accounts don't care whether I'm in Dublin or Dubai. I can jog along the Seine in Paris to the same music on Spotify that I listen to when I'm running along the Willamette River in Portland.

On WhatsApp, I send text messages to my friends every day at no cost, no matter where in the world I am. Skype is a snap. But banking is something else altogether. (Phone calls go in the same category as banking, but that's for another blog post.)

This is a universal experience, from what I can gather. Anyone living abroad wrestles with the arcane formulas and fees that go into converting an American salary to a British (or Brazilian, or Burmese) bank account.

Two weeks in London, and I've already found that American expats trade banking horror stories like crusty sailors comparing sharkbite scars.

My story, briefly, is this: In order to avoid a $35 Bank of America fee every time I move my paycheck to the United Kingdom, I devised a hopscotch as follows: Dollars leave Bank of America to an international transfer company. That company hands off the money to a Lloyds Bank International account. Lloyds International plops it into an account with UK Lloyds. Hardly simple, but at least the plan comes with no fees. Guaranteed.

The first transfer took three days longer than planned, and arrived with $600 less than the amount that left the U.S.

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For more than four years, the unemployment rate has been sliding down — from a 10 percent peak to today's 6.7 percent.

But does that reflect a fast-strengthening economy? Or is the rate falling only because so many people are dropping out of the workforce?

In coming weeks, members of Congress and the Federal Reserve Board will be making big policy decisions based upon their best understanding of those unsettled questions.

"The problem is that there are multiple possible explanations" for why the jobless rate has been falling since 2009, said Ann Owen, a former Fed economist who now teaches at Hamilton College. "There's no one thing that ties it all up" and makes it absolutely clear what is happening.

Even though their understanding of the job market's health may be incomplete, policymakers must make judgments. Here are just two issues hanging in the balance:

Interest rates. The Federal Reserve said in 2012 that it would allow interest rates to rise once the jobless rate fell to 6.5 percent. But as the magic 6.5 percent level draws closer, many people fear the economy is still far too weak to handle higher rates, which would make homes, cars and other purchases less affordable.

Extended unemployment benefits. Democrats plan to push Congress to renew extended unemployment benefits. Many Republicans say that emergency measure, first approved in 2008, is no longer needed. But is it?

As economists sift through the data, these are agreed-upon facts:

In 2007, 66 percent of Americans over age 16 either had a job or were looking for one. Today, that is down to 62.8 percent, the lowest labor-force participation rate since 1978.

When fewer people are in the job market, the unemployment rate can look better. In the past year, the unemployment rate has plunged from 7.9 percent to 6.7 percent.

In December, employers added just 74,000 jobs. But the unemployment rate fell three-tenths of a percentage point as 347,000 people left the labor market.

These are some leading theories to explain the falling jobless rate:

Baby boomers are retiring. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago says that except for an uptick during the housing boom, the labor force has been shrinking for a decade because boomers are aging out of the workforce.

Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, made the labor-force participation rate soar in the 1980s, especially as women started working. Now we are seeing the predictable reversal of that trend, which would have played out no matter what economic policies had prevailed in recent years.

Many economists say retirements are causing about half of the labor force shrinkage. Others say it's 60 percent, and yet others believe it's more like 40 percent.

More people are claiming disability. An economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia says the labor force has been shrinking in part because of soaring Social Security disability claims. And those disabled people are as lost to employers as the retirees.

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Virtual money could have very real effects for companies that help people transfer money.

There are now more than 70 virtual currencies, with the largest players being Bitcoin, Ripples and Litecoin. Another group tried to launch Coinye last week, though its backers abandoned their efforts on Tuesday after receiving a cease and desist letter from lawyers representing Kanye West. Some stores accept Bitcoins as payment.

Analysts say not all these currencies will last and very few people actually use them at the moment. But in the long run, virtual currencies could disrupt the market for traditional finance companies like banks, or remittance companies like Western Union, which handle money transfers. For one, the Royal Canadian Mint demonstrated MintChip, a digital payment platform, on Monday, the first country entering the game.

A Rush For Virtual Gold

Few of the many virtual currencies will last, says Nick Holland, senior analyst at the research firm Javelin Strategy & Research. In the latest forecast, his group estimated the virtual currency market would have doubled to more than $10 billion by the end of last year. He says they haven't seen signs that suggest otherwise.

"It's something of a gold rush right now; there are a lot of them out there," Holland says. "A lot of them will not make it at all; a lot of them are just science projects that people are playing around with."

However, if the currencies themselves don't stay, the idea driving them will, according to Holland and Joshua Gans, professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto.

"It's surprisingly difficult to transfer money between banks, and the question is, 'Why should that be?' " Gans says. "Some of these [virtual currencies] are trying to see if they can eliminate that, but of course the banks will come in and say, 'Well, we were charging people for those things in the past; we won't anymore.' "

Banks and companies like Western Union charge a fee for transfers, as much as $45 for international wire transfers, and you need the recipient's name, bank account information and the bank's routing number; with virtual currencies, some claim this could be cheaper and almost instantaneous. Holland and Gans compare it to how Skype disrupted the market for telecommunications companies: Making calls over the Internet made business harder for traditional phone companies charging for long-distance calls.

Actual Use Still 'A Drop In The Ocean'

But just to take Bitcoin as an example, the exchange rate is far from stable. Also, Holland cautions that just as voice-over-IP technology like Skype took years to become mainstream, the same will be true for virtual currencies, even ones that have been making headlines lately.

"Look at Bitcoin as a canary in the mine," Holland says. "The actual usage among the population at large is a drop in the ocean."

But, some significant players have noticed that drop.

On Monday, the Royal Canadian Mint demonstrated MintChip, a digital money transfer platform, at the National Retail Federation's convention in New York City. Although it is not a virtual currency, Holland and others say this shows that governments are starting to pay attention; a sign that virtual currencies are more than just a fad. Bank of America Merrill Lynch recently released its first assessment of Bitcoin, saying the cryptocurrency can become "a major means of payment for e-commerce" that "may emerge as a serious competitor to traditional money transfer problems."

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Bitcoin Takes Stage In Texas Senate Campaign