Cash and hacking

[longspurr]

Yesterday as I was checking out of Gander Mountain, I noticed their Point of Sale terminal used Windows XP. This is the route of many business hacks for customers credit card info.

So I suspect that if Gander Mountain has not been hacked yet -it will join the list.
Yes I was paying cash for my shotgun shells.

For anyone not watching the stories about business's being hacked and your credit card info stolen, here is a bit of an article from Forbes magazine.

October 10, 2014: 8:01 AM ET
Dairy Queen is the latest company to get hit by a security breach saying that payment card data has been impacted at nearly 400 of its restaurants around the country.
The ice cream stand operator said malware called Backoff is to blame, and that it accessed systems through a "third-party vendor's compromised account credentials." The company also said the malware has been "contained."

The hacked systems contained customer names, payment card numbers and expiration dates, according to the company.
On Thursday, Dairy Queen published an online list of the 395 restaurants where payment card data was affected. Orange Julius locations were also affected. The company has about 4,500 outlets.
The company said the time period of the malware intrusion is between August and October, but varies at each location.

Customer payment card data has been hacked at many companies over the last year, including Target (TGT), Supervalu, Michaels and Neiman Marcus, as well as the restaurant chain P.F. Chang's.

 

[hittman]

I suspect most of the hacks don't happen at the POS but rather at a main server or with the processor handling the data on their behalf.

Agreed though that XP machines are dumpster fodder if you're hooked up to the www.

 

[longspurr]

Apparently the US government and security firms think IT IS the XP embedded software that is a problem.

July 31, Homeland Security, along with the Secret Service, the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center and their partners in the security industry, warned companies to check their in-store cash register systems for a malware package that security experts called Backoff after a word that appeared in its code. Until that point, Backoff malware and variations of it were undetectable by antivirus products.

The hackers use those footholds to crawl through corporate networks until they gain access to the in-store cash register systems. From there, criminals collect payment card data off the cash register systems and send it back to their servers abroad.

E.M.V. (smart credit cards) makes counterfeiting far more difficult than magnetic stripe cards, but analysts say they believe that most retailers will not meet the October 2015 deadline because of the cost to upgrade their terminals — from $500 to $1,000 per terminal, according to Javelin Strategy & Research.

With cash register malware rampant, however, they may have no choice.
Millions of American consumers’ payment card details are being sold on the black market, many of them taken from American companies that do not know their systems have been breached.

 

[gramps]

Are the E.M.V. (smart credit cards) the same as the RFID credit cards? if so I don't think they are any better. IMO
gramps

 

[Rancher Will]

I don't understand why any hackers would fool around hacking a few thousand pieces of data from retail stores, etc. A few months ago it was reported that there are servers containing not thousands but millions of individuals' data.

The Obama-care servers contain millions of individual names, addresses, dates of birth, social security numbers, credit card numbers, etc, all in one place with, as reported, no adequate security. Retail stores and private businesses, to the best of my knowledge, do not have all of the above information in one place to be hacked, as does Obama-care Servers.

 

[mohavesam]

China builds the electronics that we all use for any type of electronic transactions.
China then sells these circuitry assemblies to companies all over the world.
China has organized teams/forces of hackers.
China has the most to gain by shifting US monies and capitalistic transactions.
China has a 300-year plan to destroy its enemies.
The USA does not...

 

[stevemb]

Mohavesam, you are correct. I've harped on the china threat many times. They are a bigger threat than Russia ever was. If you turn obama over you'll see a little, made in china label.