According to the New York Times the data that had been stolen from the hack on Target is now rolling into the black market.

In early December the hack Target suffered resulted in data stolen from roughly 40 million debit and credit cards. Not long after, on December 11, there was definite increase in the amount of stolen credit cards “from every bank and union” available on the black market according to Easy Solutions, who monitor fraud.

According to Brian Krebs, a security blogger who initially broke the story about Target being hacked, the credit cards being sold on the black markets range from costing a quarter to a hundred dollars for credit cards that have higher limits.

 A lot of the stolen credit card information travels in the same channels as drugs do and it is fairly common to find drugs dealers dealing in them as well, and often they are the ones who are arrested. “When you try to deal with this problem from a street policing perspective, it’s often the drug dealers, not the guys making the actual money, who get caught,” said Paul Kocher. Kocher is the president at Cryptography Research, who are a a division of Rambus that deal with security.

Target has assured customers that there have only been a few instances of fraud so far, and that customers won’t “be held financially accountable for fraudulent purchases,” reports the Times. Plus, Target is offering free credit monitoring to all affected customers. Still, as time goes on there will be more instances and this is yet another example of a company that is ill-prepared to deal with online security in the 21st century.

[via The Verge, The New York Times]