New virus attacks when you swipe your debit card

New Delhi, Jan 19: Cyber security sleuths have detected a "black" private information stealing virus in the Indian online banking transactions space and have alerted consumers who swipe debit or credit cards at shopping counters to make payments.

The "severely" spreading virus of the Trojan family has been detected conducting its clandestine operations at the Point of Sale (POS) counters placed at retail terminals after the RBI made it mandatory in December last year for debit cards holders to punch in their PIN every time they make a purchase.

The virus named "Dexter, black POS, memory dump and grabber" can acquire seven aliases when infecting a system and once it is successful in breaching the security protocols of a POS terminal, it steals confidential data like card holder's name, account number, expiration date, CVV code and other discretionary information which could lead to financially compromising and phishing attacks on the card at a later stage.

"It has been reported that malware campaigns targeting payment card processing, point-of-sale (POS), check out systems or equipment are on the rise.

"The common infection vectors for POS system malwares includes phishing emails or social engineering techniques to deliver the malware, use of default or weak credentials, unauthorised access, open wireless networks along with the methods of installing malware as a part of service," a latest advisory issued to the public by the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-India) said.

The CERT-In is the nodal department to protect Indian cyberspace and software base infrastructure against any destructive and hacking activities.