Target's point-of-sale terminals infected with malware

The CEO of retailer Target has revealed in an interview that the company point-of-sale (PoS) system were infected with malware, confirming what security experts had expected back during the huge data breach at Target in December.

Greg Steinhafel told CNBC: "We don't know the full extent of what transpired, but what we do know is that there was malware installed on our point-of-sale registers. That much we've established."

Originally the American retail giant said that approximately 40 million credit card and debit card accounts may have been compromised by the breach. Now the company has announced that personal data, including names, addresses and emails, had also been stolen from an additional 70 million.

How is it done?

Malware programs designed for PoS systems are commonly referred to as RAM scrapers, because they search the terminal's random access memory (RAM) for transaction data and steal it.

PoS systems are actually computers with peripherals like card readers and keypads attached to them. Many of these systems run a version of Windows Embedded as the OS as well as special cash register software.

With the information from a card's magnetic stripe, known as track 1 and track 2 data, cybercriminals can effectively clone the card. However, they also need the PIN in order to withdraw money from an ATM or perform fraudulent transactions with a cloned debit card.

A post on an underground blog also surfaced recently with the author asking for aid in deciphering a 50GB collection of encrypted PIN codes. Researchers at IntelCrawler followed the discussion and determined that some of the cards in a sample provided by the author were issued by U.S and Canadian banks.

The recent request by the underground to decrypt PIN data may be coincidental to the Target breach or possibly some of the actual perpetrators floating the sample to see what resources and success the power of the underground has had or could have given the magnitude and value of the Target breach," they said in a blog post.

• Keeping your IT infrastructure safe and secure

Thousands of government PCs will expose themselves to malware as Windows XP expires

An investigation into the numbers of PCs, conducted by The Register, in the public sector still running Windows XP has revealed that many thousands will still be using the operating system, even when its end-of-life expires.

HMRC and NHS Scotland said that they both had migration plans in place to replace their XP systems, moving to Windows 7 in most cases.

Those plans, however, will not be in place when Windows XP's end-of-life deadline passes on April 8. Microsoft offer a subscription service for companies still on its old operating system to receive relevant security updates. HMRC, nor NHS Scotland, however, will pay for this protection.

NHS England, however, when asked how many of the 1 million PCs and laptops at trusts, GPs and hospitals run Windows XP, answered that they simply do not know. Each GP, hospital and trust region is treated as a separate entity, and therefore NHS England do not know how much of their IT infrastructure may be vulnerable after April 8.

"Acutely aware" of missing the deadline

Application migration specialist Camwood, heavily involved in helping customers move from Windows XP, said that it has several "large" customers paying Microsoft for support after 8 April rather than go without protection.

"It was cheaper for them to pay Microsoft than to accelerate migration," Camwood chief executive Adrian Foxall told The Register.

Despite the fact Windows XP support is due to finish in three months, Camwood is still picking up new business from organisations in the public sector to start migrations, it says – many of them within the NHS.

"We are still winning new projects now. They will miss the deadline and they are acutely aware of that," Foxall said.

• TechRadar's guide to migrating to Windows 8