Weekly News Roundup: September 20, 2013

Some news highlights from around the world this week including video of a compromised payment terminal, the global rise in ransomware attacks, and a new anti-counterfeiting feature to prevent card cloning:

The Register – Do you trust your waiter? Hacked bank-card reader TEXTS your info to crims – You’ve probably heard of POS manipulation scams, where fraudsters tap into card readers and payment terminals to steal customer card data as it’s swiped, but here’s your chance to see it in action. A video has emerged of a Russian-speaking man demonstrating how a compromised Verifone terminal behaves normally in the transaction process, but can later be used to download customer data. The device can be further modified to use a SIM card to text the card data to a fraudster’s phone remotely. The footage, apparently shown on an underworld bazaar, is used to flog the compromised but otherwise working kit for $3,000 apiece – or a mere $2,000 if you’re willing to share 20 per cent of the ill-gotten gains with the sellers under a form of hired-purchase agreement.

Bank Info Security – Trojans Tied to New Ransomware Attacks – Ransomware (malicious software that locks up computer systems until a ransom is paid for the key) attacks are on the rise, and a recent resurgence of the banking Trojan Citadel, a Zeus variant, is partly to blame, research from McAfee Labs shows. According to McAfee, global ransomware attacks more than doubled in the second quarter of this year, compared with the previous quarter. Ransomware attacks have been steadily increasing since 2011, but the spike this year led to an all-time high of more than 320,000 unique ransomware samples in the second quarter, McAfee reports.

Irish Independent – Credit card seal is the ‘holy grail’ in security – Researchers from Cork’s Tyndall Institute have developed a unique hologram contained within a small sticker tag that the team believes to be the ‘holy grail’ of anti-counterfeiting technology for credit cards. The team aimed to make it more difficult for fraudsters to be able to create high-quality card clones, and claims ‘strong’ interest from major companies.