Researchers at Trend Micro have conducted an analysis of GamaPoS, a new point-of-sale (PoS) malware that has made its way onto the systems of United States organizations with the aid of the notorious Andromeda botnet.
The Andromeda botnet has a wide reach, which is why many cybercriminals rely on it for distributing malware. In the campaign involving GamaPos, experts determined that the PoS malware is downloaded on only 3.8 percent of systems affected by Andromeda.
PoS malware is designed to steal payment card data from PoS systems. Since most of the devices infected with Andromeda backdoors are not running any PoS software, it appears that the attackers behind GamaPoS are hoping to catch at least some PoS systems in the large volume of compromised computers.
The list of victims identified by Trend Micro includes a credit union, a pet care company, a theatre, a furniture wholesale firm, online stores, a consumer electronics company, a records storage facility, an employment agency, a restaurant, software developers, and an industrial supply distributor.
Once it successfully infects a system, GamaPoS scans all processes in search for Track 2 data associated with Visa, Discover, Maestro and other debit cards. Collected credit and debit card data is stored in a text file and uploaded to the attacker’s’ server.
Trend Micro believes GamaPoS is closely linked to Nitlove POS, a threat analyzed in May by FireEye. In both campaigns the attackers use spam and macro-based malware for distribution, and the initial stages of the attack involve the same IP block.