A cyber security firm says it has identified the author of the malware that breached Target, and allowed criminals to walk away with the personal information of around 70 million Target customers. Apparently, the author of the malware is a 17-year old programmer who has "roots" in St. Petersburg, Russia. It is not certain if he will be captured and prosecuted since he was not directly behind the attack. According to the security firm, he created and sold the malware, but was not directly involved in the Target hack.
"The first name of the malware was a lyric "Kaptoxa" ("potatoe" - in russian slang)," said IntelCrawler, the cyber security firm..
Furthermore, the malware used in the attack is called BlackPOS, though not the original version. This one has been re-engineered to capture the data from networked cash registers during a brief moment when it is decrypted during the authorization process.
Another cyber security firm iSight Partners has also revealed that it would have been difficult to detect the mawlare. "At the time of discovery and analysis, the malware had a zero percent anti-virus detection rate, which means that fully updated anti-virus engines on fully patched computers could not identify the malware as malicious," it said.
It is likely at this point every anti-virus and anti-malware software would have been updated to block any attack from BlackPOS. However, the damage has already been done since 70 million of Target customers have been compromised by this attack. Moreover, the stealing of data is the least of Target's problem - what the company should worry about now is if the criminals are potent enough to use the information they have gathered to make a sizeable profit.
The good news is, consumers, will have the chance to get their money back if their debit or credit card information has been compromised. In many instances, victims can get their money back in a short amount of time, or up to one week.
"Our rules say five days, but most consumers get (their money) back within 24 hours," Visa spokeswoman Rosetta Jones said.
