Week 3- New ‘Dexter’ malware strikes point-of-sale systems

Many of us use our credit and debit cards to make purchases at many stores to include hotels and we do so sometimes not really thinking about the risk associated with doing so.  We assume that point-of-sale systems are secure and safe and we don’t think about the fact that these systems can be attacked like any other system.  Why?  Because they contain credit and debit card data of every card that has been swiped for purchases.   According to an article titled “New ‘Dexter’ malware strikes point-of-sale systems” written by Charlie Osborne hundreds of POS systems have been affected with malware.  The malware called “Dexter” has affected systems in over 40 countries with 30% of the infections taken place in the US.  Dexter is designed to steal credit card numbers and data.  Dexter is designed to target POS systems by injecting itself into the iexplore.exe in Windows Server.  It then takes credit card data from the server and sends it back remotely.  At this point the hackers can produce fake credit cards using the credit card numbers retrieved from the server.  Majority of the operating systems infected have been Microsoft products with Windows XP being the most targeted.  So far the names of the business affected have not been released.  The article can be found at:  http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57559171-83/new-dexter-malware-strikes-point-of-sale-systems/