BBC News reports that South Africa was hit last month by one of the biggest cyber fraud attacks in the nation’s history.
The Payment Association of South Africa (Pasa) confirms that thousands of shops, restaurants, and hotels were compromised with losses expected be in the millions, if not hundreds of millions of Rand (approximately USD 100,000-10,000,000).
According to BBC News and Pasa, the attackers used malware called “Dexter”—named after a string of code in one of its files and possibly a reference to the popular Showtime hit about a serial killer—to target point-of-sale (POS) systems in order to obtain magnetic strip credit card information and transmit the information back to the attackers. However, the assailants were unable to steal pin or CVV numbers.
The perpetrators are believed to be based in Europe, although the country and location is unknown.
Pasa Chief Executive, Walter Volker, told BBC:
It’s probably the worst of its kind in terms of losses. We started detecting higher levels of fraud at some of the retailers early in the year—from about late-January, February. We initially thought it was a normal seasonal thing, but as the volumes increased we decided to appoint a forensics investigation company. Eventually [the company] was able to find this particular malware in some of the locations. Very soon after we found the cause of the compromise, we were able to clean up those sites with anti-malware software.
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