Researchers find large global botnet of infected PoS systems - Nemanja

Security researchers uncovered a global cybercriminal operation that infected with malware almost 1,500 point-of-sale (POS) terminals, accounting systems and other retail back-office platforms from businesses in 36 countries.

The infected systems were joined together in a botnet that researchers from cybercrime intelligence firm IntelCrawler dubbed Nemanja. The researchers believe the attackers behind the operation might be from Serbia.

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According to IntelCrawler, the Nemanja botnet included 1,478 infected systems in countries on most continents including the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, China, Russia, Brazil and Mexico.

Researchers find large global botnet of infected PoS systems - Nemanja

Hello everyone,
I couldn't find anything about it on ATS so just decide to share it with you.

Looks like more and more cyber crimes are on the way. After the Target, Neiman Marcus, and Michaels security breaches again with PoS-terminals this is further evidence of the depth problems in the sector.

Additional source : intelcrawler.com...

Thanks for the heads up. My husband's CC info was affected twice - once with Adobe, the other with Target - and both companies offered free credit protection for one year.

We were unsure if the credit protection was really what it was made out to be but a few months ago, we applied for an new CC to get a large discount on an airline ticket and the credit protection did alert us to the activity. So, it was a small comfort to know that someone is actually watching over it all.

I read just a couple of days ago that the CC companies are again urging the US to switch over to the microchipped cards to protect the CC numbers at the PoS. I got the impression that merchants were balking because of the cost that would be incurred switching over to new equipment. But, despite the cost, Target is working on switching over to the new equipment that would allow the chipped cards to be used in their stores. Maybe they'll pave the way for other major retailers to do the same.

I guess they really are a POS.

I have made a thread relating to this called, "You're the Next Victim of the Cyber Wars"

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I like your take on this, thanks for sharing your insights. There seems to be something bigger to this, I suspect that darkpos may have been developed and distributed to the criminal networks by a foreign country that may introduce more hacks to weaken the U.S. financially. The damage gets done and so many scammers are involved that it would not likely point back at the real perps. Blackpos is said to have originated in Russia or specifically the Ukraine. Seems like things have been heating up with Russia and the Ukraine lately hasn't it?

originally posted by: Toadmund
I guess they really are a POS.

*zing*
lol.



Scary how they are pushing towards microchipped cards. Even scarier that cyber crime, and identity theft is becoming such an alarming and common problem, that is *makes sense* to use micro chipped cards. How long until those are somehow exploited though?

a reply to: iasenko

Having been dealing with one the the UK's biggest building society's and the times their computer 'was running slow', I have a horrible suspicion that many institutions computer systems are ancient (by what is one the market today) and need a complete overhaul. Just how safe they are, after watching a programme on Cloud storage leaves me wondering and worried.

I would like to know the actual amount of banking hacking and theft that actually goes on, because I know the banks would never admit theft and had a policy to sacking immediately any staff who stole. However cyber theft is quite another thing and I suspect our whole network of web money would fold if the public actually knew the truth.

a reply to: Shiloh7

Most banks are still using mainframes as their core system and quite often the code is ancient as to move it to something else requires balls of steel and a hell of a lot of testing to ensure that it works first time as you can't sort of say "Oh well never mind lets have another go" and as banks have brought each other out they've inherited systems that probably are not compatible and require all sorts of kludges and bodges to make them work

and another thing is that mainframes are licensed on their MIPS rating so you pay for a certain level of performance and while in theory you can upgrade to a much faster system it costs and most banks will pay for just enough to get the daily stuff done just in time as they operate 24x7 anyway but a failure somewhere may mean having to rerun a job or 2 and put everything back by several hours which may mean its running into office hours slowing everything down

Nowadays our generation is so technology addicted and dependent. More and more data migrates to the cloud, targeting that data will definitely increase. We have to remember the increasing vulnerability of mobile applications and other threats that may emanate from smart phones and tablets.

Another likely trend is that it will get easier to monetize stolen data in 2014. While the notion of virtual money such as BitCoin or Linden Dollars is still a pretty nascent concept, the cyber criminal underground will continue to refine its organization and resources to be able to quickly and anonymously trade in stolen data.

Even Kickstarter was breached a few months ago ... what to say, we are not save.

a reply to: Maxatoria

My paranoid bone is prompting me to ask this: Have you ever heard of a back door system?

originally posted by: supermarket2012

originally posted by: Toadmund
I guess they really are a POS.

*zing*
lol.



Scary how they are pushing towards microchipped cards. Even scarier that cyber crime, and identity theft is becoming such an alarming and common problem, that is *makes sense* to use micro chipped cards. How long until those are somehow exploited though?[/]

Clicky

I take my cash out, I don't even trust the banks with my fake virtual money.

originally posted by: cavtrooper7
a reply to: Maxatoria

My paranoid bone is prompting me to ask this: Have you ever heard of a back door system?

ooh thats easy to answer and yes they exist...the most basic is that mainframe systems normally have "dial in" access for engineer level access and that normally can be via an extra separate password be used to get better access levels

having worked on plenty of systems if you want to hack one get a job at the manufacturer on their support side as it'll give you pretty much full access

basically nearly everything enterprise level has to be backdoor-able for the simple reason the sys-admins can go mad so at some point there has to be a way of getting back control, sometimes it requires local access and other times its remote

*Bump* Because I love the subject matter of this thread.

Also: Hey, aren't most POS terminals these days VMs running on thin client terminals? And if that's the case doesn't that make this even more scary(er)? I mean, one is not supposed to be able to hack in to those very easily last time I checked.

Why are people so surprised??
Go into any restaurant/pub where they have handheld card units, with a laptop and the right software you can sniff the transaction.
Work in a banking call centre you can record all conversations via your smart phone.
Go on the darknet and buy yourself a chipped pos card reader for your dodgy pop up shop.
Card skimmers, get yourself a crappy job at any cafe/pub/shop and skim cards.

There are so many ways to get access to cards the only way to protect yourself is use CASH..
The banks will never let it be known how much fraud is being committed because of their outdated systems.