PoS Malware Thrives in Unsecured Indian SMBs

Trend Micro in a recent survey has revealed that Indian SMBs were increasingly being detected with PoS malware.

The Q3 2015 report released by the company has revealed that 45% of PoS malware has been detected in the SMBs Point-of-Sales. More importantly, cyber attackers have started utilizing conventional mass-infection tools like spam, botnets and exploit kits rather than using targeted-attacking format.

TrendLabs of Trend Micro exposed that in order to hit the jackpot cybercriminals started chasing after numerous vulnerable PoS devices. The number augmented from 45 percent to 66 percent according to survey of the Lab. SMBs, the lower budget industrial units suffered the most that do not have the capability to purchase top notch security protection unlike the large F 500-1000 organizations.

For these malwares SMBs proved to be very productive and their easy point-of-sale can be targeted very easily. The sole reason is that these SMBs lack proper ICT and their databases can be hacked without any difficulty. In fact, their security systems are also very poor. The tortoise adoption of cutting-edge payment gateway technologies like Europay, MasterCard, and Visa (EMV) and contactless Radio-Frequency-Identification (RFID)- enabled credit cards, mobile wallets and several other payment processing technologies can pose a threat to the security backdrop.

TrendLabs recently discovered that malware attacks were targeting PoS systems with the assistance of Angler Exploit Kit that is basically well-known for utilizing malvertisements and compromised sites as infection vector. The Trojan was detected as Troj_RECOLOAD A.

Kasidet, a commercially available builder, is known for its use in DDoS attacks began detecting PoS-RAM-scraping capabilities this quarter. Consequently, the recent iteration accounted for 12 percent of this quarter’s total PoS malware detection volume.

GamaPOS a new malaware detected in July this spread mayhem in scores of SMBs and other large companies. The assistance of Andromeda botnet and the “dynamite or blast fishing” has led to the birth of this malware. With this malware cybercriminals spammed every address with the belief that this could make their entry into the PoS systems.