Everyone has a unique way of welcoming the New Year. Some just celebrate the occasion to blow up their steam whereas others seem determined about their futuristic goals – hence form resolutions to facilitate their accomplishments.
Hackers on the other hand are accompanied with absolutely bizarre plans to welcome the New Year. There were many hacks acknowledged by the Netizens at the start of this year. I however will talk about only two of them; because, both the incidents I would have one thing in common – the person culpable.
The first victim of this digital predator was Neiman Marcus. Neiman Marcus on 1st of January affirmed the possibility of a hack – possibly victimizing confidentiality of the customers as their credit card information was accessed. Neiman Marcus stated that they were informed by one of the victimized customers during mid of December whose bank statement revealed an unauthorized activity processed via credit card.
We would take all necessary steps to improve our security discrepancies and take every measure possible to track down whoever is responsible, they said. However, Neiman Marcus could not prescribe the source behind the security breach or identify the security loopholes.
Second victim to be highlighted here is Target. Earlier this year, Target encountered a major hack where the debit/credit card information of 40-70 million US customers (some say 110 million) was stolen by a mastermind. The hacker accessed the information of credit/debit card holder that came to shop at Target from November 27th to December 15th.
https://twitter.com/rljourno/status/421677247829798913
The information accessed comprises card holder’s names, CVV numbers, card numbers and expiry date of the cards. The authorities along with other concerned personnel couldn’t do anything but to hypothesize the person(s) responsible or the method through which the Target’s security was breached. Meanwhile, the customer had to suffer the consequences as phony cards fabricated on the basis of all accessed information were available in the black market – traded for around $200 per card.
The bizarre phenomenon to be highlighted here is – the day Neiman Marcus affirmed the hack was the same day Target announced victimization of its 40 million customers. Anyways, the wait is finally over. It is time for the curtain raiser. It has been confirmed by a security firm that the mastermind behind the hacks acknowledged by Neiman Marcus and Target is a teenager from Russia.
Yes! A Russian teenager designed a malware that was used to hack both Neiman Marcus and Target. A security firm named IntelCrawler affirmed that the security breach encountered by Neiman Marcus and Target was a malware that infiltrated their security systems. IntelCrawler also said that the malware is known as BlackPOS – and its author is a 17-year-old Russian teenager. However, execution of the plan is a mystery yet to be unveiled.
Arsalan Jabbar 