Dexter

Dexter is a dangerous malware infection that is designed to steal credit card information. This would not be a particularly new thing if Dexter targeted general computers. However, Dexter targets retail point-of-sale terminals, tills that are based on a standard operating system such as Windows XP. Hundreds of businesses all around the world have become infected with the Dexter Trojan. The potential of this malicious application is scary considering the amount of unprotected businesses around the world.

Dexter has managed to infect point-of-sale terminals corresponding to numerous kinds of businesses around the world, including hotels, stores, retailers and restaurants. These attacks are not specific to a single country. According to PC security analysts, about one third of attacks involving Dexter have been detected in the United States. The United Kingdom follows with about one fifth of the total attacks with Canada in a third place with nine percent of worldwide Dexter infections. Computers infected with this malware threat have been detected in more than three dozen countries around the world. Although malware that attacks point-of-sale terminals is not as common as other kinds of infections (due to the difficulty of infecting these kinds of machines), the potential for abuse is huge. Point-of-sale terminals handle numerous credit card transactions every day, giving the criminals responsible for Dexter access to a huge amount of credit card information.

Criminals do whatever it takes to get credit card information from unsuspecting computer users. Usually, to gain access to profitable credit card numbers, criminals need to install malware on tens of thousands of computers, relying on social engineering scams and sophisticated malware. However, the same amount of credit card data can be stolen by simply infecting several point-of-sale terminals with Dexter. This is because a point-of-sale terminal handles credit card transactions for multiple users multiple times per day. Dexter attacks terminals using various versions of the Windows operating system. It takes the computer's memory and uploads it to a server that seems to be located in Seychelles. There, this information is skimmed to isolate credit card data for credit card cloning and fraud.