Target Malware Presumably Developed By A Russian Teenager

By now most of you might have heard about what happened to Target’s point-of-sale registers during the holiday season. They were infected with malware, which ended up compromising personal information of more than 70 million people. It was initially believed that the ringleader of this massive attack was based in Eastern Europe, though security firm IntelCrawler appears to have found the person who wrote the malware. Apparently it was a 17-year old Russian, having roots in St. Petersburg, who has sold more than 60 variants of the software to hackers based in Eastern Europe and other countries.

IntelCrawler is of the view that this teenager isn’t behind the attacks himself, his involvement is limited to the malware known as BlackPOS, which was found to have infected retailers such as Target and even Neiman Marcus. This programmer is “very well known” for his skill set in underground online communities for malware distribution, it is claimed. The security firm is of the view that this malware, or an iteration of it, might have affected other retailers as well, retailers who have yet to discover that they too were hacked. The security firm says that it has detected six breaches at various other retailers in the country, though it has refrained from naming them.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: General
Tags: Hacking, target