Cyber security experts have detected a private information stealing virus in the Indian online banking transactions space and have alerted consumers who swipe debit or credit cards at shopping counters to make payments. The “severely” spreading virus of the Trojan family has been detected conducting its clandestine operations at the POS counters placed at retail terminals after the RBI made it mandatory in December 2013 for debit cards holders to punchin their PIN every time they make a purchase. The virus named ‘Dexter, black POS, memory dump and grabber’ can acquire seven aliases when infecting a system and once it is successful in breaching the security protocols of a POS terminal, it steals confidential data like card holder’s name, account number, expiration date, CVV code and other discretionary information which could lead to financially compromising and phishing attacks on the card at a later stage. An advisory by the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT)-India said the common infection vectors for POS system malwares include phishing emails or social engineering techniques to deliver the malware, use of default or weak credentials, unauthorised access, open wireless networks along with the methods of installing malware as a part of service.
