Dexter, researchers are calling this new malware has tainted hundreds of point-of-sale computers at big-name retail merchants, hotels, restaurants, and additional businesses, according to a report published by Aviv Raff, head technology officer of Israel-based security firm Seculert.
Businesses infected in the past three months are located in 40 different countries, with 30 percent of those compromised located in the United States, 19 percent in the United Kingdom, and nine percent in Canada.
Malware that infects point-of-sale terminals can be among the most effective ways to execute credit fraud since it targets machines with access to large amounts of the needed information.
“Instead of going through the trouble of infecting tens of thousands of PCs or physically installing a skimmer, an attacker can achieve the same results by targeting just a few POS systems with specially crafted malware,” Raff wrote. “Dexter is one example of such malware.”
Dexter has infected systems running a variety of different versions of Windows, including XP, Home Server, Server 2003, and Windows 7. Once installed, the malware then uploads the contents of the computer to a server located in Republic of Seychelles.
