Most Recent Posts

The recent disclosure that large troves of customer information has been stolen from Target, and now Neiman Marcus, points to growing vulnerabilities in cybersecurity. And experts say the problem is becoming more difficult to combat.

Avivah Litan, a security analyst at Gartner, says she's hearing from sources at retailers that the data breaches last holiday season were not limited to the 70 million-plus Target customers and untold number of Neiman Marcus shoppers.

"It's clear that there is a new bout of attacks," Litan says. She says data thieves struck several years ago at TJ Maxx, JC Penney and Target and that they could be back, though it might be a different gang of thieves.

Litan blames, in large part, the magnetic payment strip system, which she says is more vulnerable than systems used by other countries around the world, which have smart chips embedded in credit cards.

David Burg, leader of cybersecurity at PricewaterhouseCoopers, adds that part of the problem is rapid innovation.

"As we use more and more technologies to collaborate among businesses, or to connect with consumers using mobile devices and other kinds of applications that allow consumers to interface with various corporations, what you have is an attack surface that keeps increasing in size and complexity, making it very hard to secure," Burg says.

Burg says while there is a lot of pressure on retailers to alert consumers, regulatory and law enforcement authorities quickly, often there are delays because criminals work hard to cover their tracks.

"It's very hard to figure out what happened, how it happened and what the impact was," he says.

Tom Kellermann, a managing director at Alvarez & Marsal, a professional services firm, says the latest round of attacks indicate that even companies that invest heavily in sophisticated security systems are seeing new vulnerabilities from new sources; namely, rogue hackers who are buying readily available software tools on the black market.

"There's a massive consulting and software-based industry that supports the shadow economy that makes it far easier for people who are not sophisticated to leverage these types of attacks," Kellermann says.

Kellermann says organized crime syndicates — especially in Eastern Europe — not only make money selling the malware, they also then use the hackers' channels to their own ends. They prod at a company's network, often hanging out for months undetected, and then plan their attack.

"From someone who has investigated major breaches in the past, I am suggesting that this campaign in particular definitely went on for months," he says.

The loss to the consumer is often time, getting reimbursement from their credit card company. But for the retailer, Kellermann says it is "incalculable."

It costs about $200 per lost record to cover legal expenses and fines. In addition, as Target recently saw, a retailer's reputation takes a hit, and its stock can fall.

Doug Johnson oversees risk management policy for the American Bankers Association, and he says banks sustain losses as well. He says forensic investigations — as the FBI and Secret Service is conducting now on the Target and Neiman Marcus breaches — take a lot of time. At the end of it, it's often difficult to prove where the data leaked, and so banks often end up holding the bag.

"[Because] it's the financial institution that reimburses the customer for that fraud," Johnson says.

Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel apologized to customers on CNBC on Monday, saying Target would pay for credit monitoring and vowed to make things right for the consumers.

A new class of restrictive abortion laws, passed in recent years in a swath of states, hinges on the argument that a fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks of gestation.

But the fetal pain assertion, viewed skeptically by many scientists, hit a bump Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a lower court ruling striking down an Arizona law that criminalized abortions at 20 weeks.

The state's ban asserted that "unborn children feel pain during an abortion at that gestational age." Federal courts last year also blocked similar "fetal pain" laws in Idaho and Georgia.

Abortion rights advocates hailed the Supreme Court's move as a signal that justices aren't inclined to take on the 40-year precedent of Roe v. Wade, which established viability at around 24 weeks (the point when a fetus is considered "viable" outside the mother's womb) and as the cutoff for most legal abortions.

"It would appear that the court is not ready or willing to deal with moving the viability line at this time," says John Robertson, chairman of the Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Rights.

"The science is weak, and it would be a major change," Robertson, a University of Texas law professor, said.

But anti-abortion activists assert that while the court's decision, offered without comment, is not the one they'd hoped for, they expect it to fuel efforts to limit abortion based on the fetal pain argument — including a federal bill passed last year by the U.S. House.

"This is a disappointment, but not a major setback," says Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List, which works to elect female candidates who oppose abortion.

She compared efforts to pass fetal pain restrictions to the "crooked path" it took to get the 2003 ban on late-term abortions.

"Every single time there was a rejection, it actually built momentum toward the final goal of passage," she said.

The question of how soon fetuses can feel pain has been debated for more than three decades. Scientists, with some exceptions, have consistently argued that fetuses are not developed enough to experience pain until around the third trimester.

A 2005 analysis of numerous studies that appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that for a fetus to feel pain its neural connections into the cortex have to be developed — and that doesn't occur until sometime after the 26th week of gestation.

Robertson, the Texas bioethicist, says that the science has not changed in the past decade and there is "overwhelming consensus" around the fetal pain issue.

But Dannenfelser and other anti-abortion activists argue that support for such laws is proved by the fact that challenges have not emerged in most of the states that in recent years have criminalized abortion at 20 weeks — from Alabama and Indiana to Louisiana and Oklahoma.

At the Center for Reproductive Rights, however, Director Nancy Northup has another explanation: "Some places where they've passed [fetal pain laws] there aren't even any providers in those states that do abortions after 20 weeks, so there's no way to challenge them."

You can't challenge a law, she notes, when there's no one with legal standing to mount the effort.

"It's a whole strategy to keep moving the timeline backwards," Northup says.

The fetal pain strategy has changed conversations that doctors are having with their patients, says Dr. Anne Davis, consulting medical director for Physicians for Reproductive Health and an associate professor for obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University.

"Ten years ago, patients never asked about this," says Davis, an abortion provider. "Now we have questions from some very distraught people — it's a very emotional subject, and most people aren't experts on pain physiology."

Her explanation to patients is that the science of fetal development has not changed. "The brain and the rest of the nervous system where the pain is coming from are not connected until the third trimester," she says.

But, as Davis attests, the fetal pain argument has taken root.

And Northup, at the Center for Reproductive Rights, says that there are dozens of abortion-related cases in legal pipeline, including those involving the fetal pain argument.

"The Supreme Court," she says, "is going to have the opportunity again and again and again this year and next year to see if they want to take a look again at their jurisprudence on abortion rights."

Some analysts say that Nintendo's days are numbered. Holiday sales of its new console, the Wii U, have been lackluster compared to Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4.

But since Nintendo still offers some of the most popular game franchises, the love of Zelda and Mario may keep the company going for a long time.

In preparation for this story, I put out a call to talk to die-hard Nintendo fans. I was inundated with responses. Among them, Brian White, 30, grew up playing the Zelda games.

Now he's got a daughter. "We named her Zelda," he says.

White says as a dad he's happy Nintendo games aren't filled with violence.

"It's something I can play and have my daughter sit in front of the TV and not be ashamed of and wonder how corrupt she's gonna be," he says.

Zelda is a series of fantasy adventure games where the main character, Link, has to save Princess Zelda and the world. The soundtrack is so beloved that it's been performed as a four movement symphony.

Manny Contreras, 25, has seen the symphony performed twice. He says the music reminds him of great experiences he's had playing Zelda. "It's great music just in general. Even if you're not a fan, if you listen to it, you're probably surprised by just how good it is."

Love of these long-time franchises is the main reason that game analyst P.J. McNealy thinks that predictions of Nintendo's demise are overblown.

“ If you look at video game sales over the last 20 to 25 even 30 years and look at the top 10 games that have sold, Nintendo's probably owned five, six, seven, eight of those games on those lists.

For the first time in history, more than half the members of Congress are millionaires, according to a new analysis of financial disclosure reports conducted by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Of the 534 current members of the House and Senate, 268 had an average net worth of $1 million or more in 2012 – up from 257 members in 2011. The median net worth for members of the House and Senate was $1,008,767.

The wealthiest member of Congress? That's Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, who had a net worth between $330 and $598 million.

The reports found that there wasn't much distinction between the two parties – congressional Democrats had a median net worth of $1.04 million as compared to about $1 million for Republicans. In both cases, the averages are up from last year, when the numbers were $990,000 and $907,000, respectively.

The release of this analysis comes at a time when officials in both parties are making an effort to address income inequality in the United States.