joining us from san francisco is danny yadron, the editor of the "wall street journal." who is targetting companies, one person or a group, or is it common enough to be done by a number of hackers. >> the answer is both. investigators are looking into it in the u.s. secret service and a unit at verizon communications. they have not outed any particular group as the group behind this, but people i have talked to, who used to be in federal law enforcement. familiar with hacker investigations say what is happening here, where you steel a bunch of credit card numbers has all the hallmarks of being tied to organised crime, a source of revenue. it will not hurt consumers if it's the numbers indemnified, basically not charged for what people use their credit cards for, that they didn't do. is the big danger here identity theft? >> there is a possibility here. not necessarily n its own. in the case of target, in addition to 40 million payment cards stolen some 70 million customers had other data such as full names, things like that. those are pieces in the life online. taken tog