Use CASH Instead of CARDS
RussyRover > 17/02/2014, 16:42
Next time you're in a shop buying your nice new bit of hardware or software, you may be getting a bit more than you bargained for if you're unlucky...
You've probably heard recently of the 'Target' store getting hacked and countless credit card details being stolen, or maybe not... well
"Hackers have recently come up with an even worse type of Trojan – and it's one you have absolutely no control over.
Unlike the more common malware infection that steals from the user that it infects; this new, deadly variant called BlackPOS actually infects the point of sale (PoS) terminals run by shops.
These terminals are often fully functioning PCs running Windows. Once a hacker has managed to infect one, they can pick up the credit/debit card number of anyone who buys anything in the shop and send it to a server under their control.
For a big department store, that could mean thousands of card numbers per day. The most high profile attack to date has been at the Target chain of stores in the US, where details of over 40 million credit cards were stolen.
The scary thing is that, as a shopper, you have no idea that your card details are being stolen – neither does the person serving you.
At the moment, security researchers aren't clear how BlackPOS manages to get into PoS terminals, but they believe it could be done by infecting a software update that gets installed on all of the terminals in a company.
A related problem is that a huge number of these terminals are actually still running Windows XP, which Microsoft are going to stop supporting in April.
For critical security tasks like this, retailers really need to be running a secure, up-to-date Windows version."
That was the info I had today in an e-mail, it all seemed good enough until the last part where they are blaming XP? Sounds like it could be Microsoft themselves behind it in an effort to get everyone moving on to Win 7 or 8...
Whichever way, use cash, you can't get hacked from it (unless you get it from an ATM) and the government hates you because it then all becomes untraceable....