Oh no, you're thinking, yet another cookie pop-up. Well, sorry, it's the law. We measure how many people read us, and ensure you see relevant ads, by storing cookies on your device. If you're cool with that, hit “Accept all Cookies”. For more info and to customize your settings, hit “Customize Settings”.

Review and manage your consent

Here's an overview of our use of cookies, similar technologies and how to manage them. You can also change your choices at any time, by hitting the “Your Consent Options” link on the site's footer.

Manage Cookie Preferences
  • These cookies are strictly necessary so that you can navigate the site as normal and use all features. Without these cookies we cannot provide you with the service that you expect.

  • These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They perform functions like preventing the same ad from continuously reappearing, ensuring that ads are properly displayed for advertisers, and in some cases selecting advertisements that are based on your interests.

  • These cookies collect information in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used. They allow us to count visits and traffic sources so that we can measure and improve the performance of our sites. If people say no to these cookies, we do not know how many people have visited and we cannot monitor performance.

See also our Cookie policy and Privacy policy.

This article is more than 1 year old

Brute-force bot busts shonky PoS passwords

RAM scrapers foisted on 60 terminals

A botnet has compromised 60 point of sale (PoS) terminals by brute-force password attacks against poorly-secured connections, FireEye researchers say.

The trio including Nart Villeneuve, Joshua Homan and Kyle Wilhoit found 51 of the 60 popped PoS boxes were based in the United States.

The attacks were basic and targeted remote desktop protocol terminals that used shamefully simple passwords such as 'password1', 'administrator' and 'pos'.

Perpetrators running the 5622 machine-strong BrutPoS botnet appeared to be located in Eastern Europe given the language used in interfaces and logs. Infected computers were spread across 119 countries.

Researchers discovered five command and control servers, three of which were offline.

"The infected system begins to make connections to port 3389; if the port is open it adds the IP to a list of servers to be brute forced with the supplied credentials," the trio wrote in a post.

"If the infected system is able to successfully brute force an RDP server, it reports back with credentials."

screenshot

BrutPoS infections: FireEye

The malware was deployed on infected systems and extracted payment card information from running processes. It attempted to obtain debug permissions likely to identify POS configurations and if successful ran an executable. If it failed, it installed itself as a service.

The trio built a honeypot that issued signals mimicking infection and watched as attackers popped its RDP login and crawled around the box attempting to open its installed PoS software before formatting the drive to erase evidence trails. ®

Similar topics

Similar topics

Similar topics

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like