I consider myself a geek but a poor one given the current circumstances. My old laptop with its gig of memory was always running over and above the physically installed memory when I used to run IE or FF(multiple instances - taps and separate instances). Another thing was that they would always be memory creeps where a single instance would go on taking upto 300 MB of memory if left on its own for a week - Which I normally do and the only way for me to recover memory was to kill all the IE or FF instances. Then came chrome and I sort of fell in love with its
design - it does an excellent job of keep every thing in order - atleast for me. If I kill an instance of chrome I get that much memory back and I havent seen memory creeps I was so fimilar with when I used to use IE and FF. So Kudos to google for doing a good job - for me at the moment performance is the key and I careful enough not to click every url I see out there. But yes it does need more support for add on etc.
The original news item indicates that these were wireless devices!!!! - thus also the issue with interference, landlines will be rather silent. But as you said vast majority of them also use landlines, however any sizable store usually uses a network connection to authenticate and validate card data - simply because it will be too slow and there will too much overhead to have separate telephone lines for each of their POS terminals. And as these were walmart partnered stores I believe they all had more than one POS at each location. Now these could have send data over the network but that would easily and quickly identified.
This is very interesting if you start thinking about how they have accomplished this.
"Examining the store's credit-card readers, investigators discovered a high-tech bug tucked behind the motherboard. It was small card containing wireless communication technology.
The bug would read an individual's card number and the corresponding personal identification number, then package and store the data. The device would once a day call a number in Lahore to upload the data to servers there and obtain instructions on what to steal next."
So it was wireless - definitely cellular. So each of these bugs would have a subset of a cell phone capable of sending and receiving text/SMS messages and must have a SIM card(as GSM is universal in Europe) to communicate over the local network perhaps using roaming capabilities. Its extremely inexpensive to buy a SIM card in Pakistan with roaming capabilities - I believe its just a couple of dollars and if the attacker can top up the card remotely so it can sustain these devices forever.
Though I do not understand how a cellular device will create strange noises in an other cellular device?
"Meanwhile, a security guard at a U.K. grocery store noticed suspicious static on his cellphone and alerted authorities."
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I consider myself a geek but a poor one given the current circumstances. My old laptop with its gig of memory was always running over and above the physically installed memory when I used to run IE or FF(multiple instances - taps and separate instances). Another thing was that they would always be memory creeps where a single instance would go on taking upto 300 MB of memory if left on its own for a week - Which I normally do and the only way for me to recover memory was to kill all the IE or FF instances. Then came chrome and I sort of fell in love with its design - it does an excellent job of keep every thing in order - atleast for me. If I kill an instance of chrome I get that much memory back and I havent seen memory creeps I was so fimilar with when I used to use IE and FF. So Kudos to google for doing a good job - for me at the moment performance is the key and I careful enough not to click every url I see out there. But yes it does need more support for add on etc.
The original news item indicates that these were wireless devices!!!! - thus also the issue with interference, landlines will be rather silent. But as you said vast majority of them also use landlines, however any sizable store usually uses a network connection to authenticate and validate card data - simply because it will be too slow and there will too much overhead to have separate telephone lines for each of their POS terminals. And as these were walmart partnered stores I believe they all had more than one POS at each location. Now these could have send data over the network but that would easily and quickly identified.
This is very interesting if you start thinking about how they have accomplished this. "Examining the store's credit-card readers, investigators discovered a high-tech bug tucked behind the motherboard. It was small card containing wireless communication technology. The bug would read an individual's card number and the corresponding personal identification number, then package and store the data. The device would once a day call a number in Lahore to upload the data to servers there and obtain instructions on what to steal next." So it was wireless - definitely cellular. So each of these bugs would have a subset of a cell phone capable of sending and receiving text/SMS messages and must have a SIM card(as GSM is universal in Europe) to communicate over the local network perhaps using roaming capabilities. Its extremely inexpensive to buy a SIM card in Pakistan with roaming capabilities - I believe its just a couple of dollars and if the attacker can top up the card remotely so it can sustain these devices forever. Though I do not understand how a cellular device will create strange noises in an other cellular device? "Meanwhile, a security guard at a U.K. grocery store noticed suspicious static on his cellphone and alerted authorities."