Displaying items by tag: POS

The Point of Sale (PoS) station is probably one of the most targeted devices in recent years. There are multiple reasons for this: older operating systems, the need to POS users to have admin rights, generic logons for the “windows” accounts, and more. Most PoS softare is very resistant to attempts to properly secure it including getting all sorts of bent out of shape when you try to apply restrictive security policies to them. I have even seen them stop working because the removable drive mount option is removed from USB ports using a group policy object.

Black Hat 2014 Las Vegas, NV – Today we had the chance to talk with Karl Sigler, Threat Intelligence Manager at Trustwave who walked us through the latest version of Backoff. For those of you that do not know Backoff is a new threat that targets POS systems through remote desktop or other remote access systems. The vector of attack is very simple, port scan for common RDP ports, perform a basic dictionary attack on any systems found, deposit the malware and cash in on the credit card information that flows through.

Point of Sale Terminals are a new target for malicious individuals. At least this is a trend that many security researchers are seeing over the last few months. These systems can be a treasure trove of information for someone looking to make some quick money. On top of that most are designed with simple and generic logons to make use easier. This is a common flaw with many Windows based POS systems, yet the trend continues.

63 largest U.S. Barnes & Noble bookstores are affected by serious safety problems. Criminals compromised Barnes & Noble POS (Point of Sale) devices and took data from credit and debit cards complete with PIN numbers for those debit cards. In each of the affected stores was found one compromised POS device. Barnes and Noble have more than 700 stores across the U.S. and more than 600 stores for students and professors so this problem is very serious.