Visa has warned customers of a security breach in its system. The financial services company issued a warning to its users that a cybercrime group is exploiting vulnerabilities at gas station point-of-sale networks to steal credit card data. Following the revelation, Visa’s fraud investigation wing launched an inquiry and have identified a group known as Fin8 to be behind the exploit. In a statement, Visa revealed that the hackers duped some fuel dispenser merchants but didn’t reveal the extent of the breach.
The hackers gained access to POS or point of sale networks through malicious emails and different unknown methods. A POS scraping software was then used that specifically targets older cards that don't have security chips and only rely on mag stripes, thereby exploiting the security. Visa said the data was sent in an unencrypted form to the vendors’ main network, where the hackers figured out how to decipher them.
The point-of-sale system isn’t fully protected against the potential outside breach, giving access to third-party to get access to user data, Visa said in a statement. Visa advised gas stations to use machines that support credit cards with chips and added that this will reduce vulnerability to cyberattacks.
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