Duncan McLeod reports:
South Africa’s banks have suffered tens of millions of rand in losses due to a major breach of customer card data by criminal syndicates that infected electronic point-of-sale (POS) devices using a variant of malicious software called Dexter.
It’s not known exactly how many POS devices were infected by the malware, but the problem is believed to have been widespread in the fast-food industry. It’s understood from a source with knowledge of the situation that chicken fast-food chain KFC has been hit particularly hard by the Dexter infection.
[…]
Payments Association of South Africa CEO Walter Volker confirms to TechCentral that the breach, which affects most of South Africa’s card-issuing banks, is significant – running into tens of millions of rand – and is at least on a par with an incident last year involved payments company PayGate, in which thousands of cards were compromised. The Dexter incident, however, affects a “broader environment”, Volker says.
Read more on TechCentral (ZA)
Update: PASA’s statement can be found here.