Two people arrested by authorities in Texas were using stolen credit cards which came from the massive Target data breach, officials said.
Shoppers leave a Target store on a rainy afternoon in Alhambra, California on December 19, 2013
Two Mexicans arrested this week were identified as Marcy Carmen Garcia Vaquera and Daniel Guardiola Dominguez, according to the police chief of McAllen, Texas, Victor Rodriguez.
The two were using fraudulent credit cards that came from the Target data breach, Rodriguez told a news conference Monday.
"Someone in Mexico is obviously buying that data," he said.
Rodriguez said US Homeland Security and Secret Service officials participated in the investigation that led to the arrests.
US officials have said little about the probe which may have affected the data of some 110 million Target customers, but security experts have suggested the malware may have come from hackers in Russia or Eastern Europe.
Researchers from IntelCrawler, a Los Angeles-based cyber intelligence company, said last week that the malware was created by a 17-year-old hacker and has been used to infect retail systems in Australia, Canada and the US.
US security firm iSight Partners concluded that the hackers stole data on as many as 110 million Target customers.
They were able to carry out the data breach by using "a new piece of malicious software," which "has potentially infected a large number of retail information systems."
Target began notifying some customers that it was offering one year of free credit monitoring to help customers guard against identity theft or unauthorized charges to their debit or credit cards.