Attackers Use Email Spam To Infect Point-of-Sale Terminals

jfruh writes: Point-of-sale software has meant that in many cases where once you'd have seen a cash register, you now see a general-purpose PC running point-of-sale (PoS) software. Unfortunately, those PCs have all the usual vulnerabilities, and when you run software on it that processes credit card payments, they become a tempting target for hackers. One of the latest attacks on PoS software comes in the form of malicious Word macros downloaded from spam emails.

Comments

Re:E-mail client?

[adolf]

I used to look after the POS machines for small chain of retail establishments.

The reason that an e-mail client was on the POS machines was because the boss was cheap, and having separate machines for internal business and external transactions seemed expensive to him, even when business halts because some bored lackey decided that they needed the latest "OMG PONIES!!" screensaver on the fucking cash register.

The reason that web browsers were on the POS machines was because Verizon are a bunch of fucks who couldn't be bothered to write a local client, but were perfectly content to always have a dependency on (old) Java and (old) Internet Explorer under (old) Windows.

The reason that the the POS machines ran as Administrator was because my counterparts who were also charged with looking after said machines couldn't be bothered to get anything to work with regular user accounts, and would actively sabotage my efforts to improve security.

The reasons that I no longer concern myself with the retail operations of that company are detailed above.

Re:Windows XP, not Linux

[ihtoit]

because word macros are still fundamentally tied to the way the kernel works with metafiles (ie the first thing it does with any binary object is try to execute it), and Windows xp comes wth an email client installed by default (Outlook Express) which for some unknown reason and unlike earlier versions of Windows (any from the 9x stable spring to mind) you can't deselect it from optional component install.