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The data breach by TJX that exposed the credit and debit card information of more than 45 million customers to fraud continues to add up, and has currently cost the company more than 10 times what the company spent in the first quarter.

According to TJX’s second quarter earnings' report, costs incurred by the data theft amounted to $118 million. TJX continued to report strong sales, which is some proof that reports of the breach has not driven customers away. To this point, TJX has spend $256 million dealing with the breach, first reported last January, which has paid for things like hardening the data storage as well as responding to the growing number of investigations and lawsuits filed as a response to the breach.

TJX admitted that 45.7 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen over an 18 month period. TJX also acknowledged that another 455,000 customers who returned merchandise without receipts had their driver’s license numbers along with other personal information stolen.

The cybercriminals managed to exploit TJX’s Wi-Fi by aiming a telescope-shaped antenna a store in St. Paul, Minn. which allowed them to grab data transmitted between hand-held price-checking devices, cash registers and the store’s computers. From there, the hackers were able to penetrate TJX’s central database.

While the cost of $256 million could be considered quite high, many predict it will continue to spiral ever upward, perhaps even into the billions.

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