New Delhi: A deadly virus which hacks and steals personal credit and debit card data is prowling in the Indian cyberspace. The virus, belonging of the ‘Trojan’ family, has been named “Backoff” and is being seen spreading through computer networks which use Windows as their operating systems.
“It has been reported that variants of malware family dubbed as ‘Backoff’ targeting Point of Sale (POS)’ systems are spreading. It allows an attacker to infect the systems further with the POS malware so as to steal customer payment cards data like card holders name, account number, expiration data, CVV code among others from POS systems,” the CERT-In said in its latest advisory to Internet users in the country.
The CERT-In is the nodal agency to combat hacking, phishing and to fortify security-related defences of the Indian Internet domain. The virus is so notorious that it is able to capture keystrokes and communicate with the command and control server for further hacking-like activity, the agency warned.
Interestingly, the virus also possesses capability to inject malicious stub into Windows ‘Explorer.exe’ for persistence in case the malicious file crashes or is stopped forcefully, the agency said.
Cybersecurity sleuths said the malware and all its variants remain “mostly undetected by the anti-virus vendors” which categorises it as a potent and big threat in the online world.
