Hackers have breached Oracle’s Micros monetary payment systems after they infected the computer’s systems with a malware, which in short, means that more than two hundred thousand card swiping machines – that are used globally – are open to attacks and for stealing your card details. According to the company, they are investigating the breach.
Since Micros comes in the top three companies that provide point-of-sales systems globally, and are highly preferred, this means that the chances of spreading the malware are equally high.
As they say, the devil is in the details, so are the hackers. Brian Krebs, who is an investigative journalist and a writer, says that the hackers have not only hacked the point-of-sales system, but have also attacked the customer support portal of Micros, thus gaining control over monetary systems of companies that use Micros’ technology.
According to the experts, the hack is being generated from Russia, and the hacking group calls themselves Carabanak Gang. Their previous activities of data breaching have made them well over a billion dollars; from hacked credit cards to banking information and other similar activities over the recent years, these incidents have made them a ‘reputable’ group in the hacking world.
However, as per Oracle, who have not yet laid out the details of the breach, the company goes on to say that their cloud-based services and other corporate networks were never affected by the breach. But, for safety reasons, Micros did respond to its customers by requesting them to update their passwords that are used to access these on-premises systems.
Technology advisory firm Granter Inc stated that the Oracle Micros breach is going to address many of the weaknesses in their systems, which will help them explore a lot about the network and the source of these hacks.
According to one security expert, who says that the hackers found a remote access to get into their systems. Which also means that the hackers can possibly use remote accessing or administrative tools to gain access to the systems running Micros technology?
According to the experts, the malware that was used to infect the systems came from a single infected system from Oracle’s very own, which then naturally infected the remaining systems.
While on the other hand, Micros states that the payment card data is encrypted before it enters the hosted customer systems.
These attacks are similar to those that allow the hackers to install a malicious remote-accessing tool – or a back door – into the servers. From there it can allow the hackers to alter and modify system settings, which then assists the hackers installation of a program on the servers that can further install software into the card swiping machines or cash registers that allow the machines to send back the card information to the hackers.
As of now, it is not sure how the hackers got into that first office machine, but the company is still investigating and recovering the damaged caused by this problem. For now, our advice would be to use the ATM machine and cash only. Do not use your cards on any point-of-sales card swiping machines.
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