Bank card-slurp nasty ‘infects tills, ATMs’, corrupt staff fingered
Audacious crooks have infected hundreds of shopping tills and cash machines with malware to swipe sensitive debit and credit card data, we’re told.
Researchers at Russian security firm Group-IB said the software nasty is called Dump Memory Grabber, which targets computers running Microsoft Windows. It can swipe information about cards issued by US banks as well as Nordstrom-branded cards. The malware is primarily targeted at point-of-sale terminals.
Several hundred internet-connected tills and ATMs in America are infected, according to Group-IB. The malware is written in C++ and designed to read the RAM of compromised systems attached to card readers; it picks out the sensitive financial data and then uses FTP to upload the account numbers, names, card expiry dates and other details to a server under the control of unidentified swindlers.
This information is used to make counterfeit credit or debit cards. Group-IB reckons that the hole-in-the-wall machines and tills are largely being infected by corrupt insiders.
The author of Dump Memory Grabber even recorded an instructional video to teach wannabe forgers how to use the malign tool, Security Week reports. Various clues suggest that a Russian hacker using the pseudonym “Wagner Richard” created Dump Memory Grabber as a sideline to his career as an internet hitman: the malware programmer will, for a fee, use a “site stressor” tool to take down a website – a distributed-denial-of-service attack in other words.
Late last month security firm McAfee reported that a similar trojan called VSkimmer was being traded in carding forums. This malware can detect card-reader hardware attached to infected Windows computers, grab all the banking information it can, and upload the swiped data to a control server. The trojan appears to be a successor of an earlier cybercrime tool called Dexter, which also targeted card payment terminals running Windows.
Group-IB has shared its research on Dump Memory Grabber with US law enforcement agencies, affected banks and Visa. A summary of Group-IB’s dossier, complete with screenshots of the malware’s control panel, can be found here. ®
Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/04/atm_malware/