Interesting tactic, and I could definitely see it being employed by an intelligence agency, but it's unlikely the fraudsters would be able to see any significan

Interesting tactic, and I could definitely see it being employed by an intelligence agency, but it's unlikely the fraudsters would be able to see any significant monetary gain from it. As you alluded, Home Depot's stock didn't decrease that much, and it bounced back shortly afterwards. Some of the fraudsters and criminals are politically motivated to an extent, especially with the recent US sanctions against Russia (the codename for the Home Depot card dump is "American Sanctions"), which you can read more about here: http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/09/home-depot-hit-by-same-malware-as-target/ http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/09/home-depot-hit-by-same-ma... The POS malware even has some not so subtle anti-American images embedded within it. But that said, they care about the money above all else. The rest is just a little added motivation.