Payment solutions provider Verifone recently announced data breach which affected its internal network.
Verifone CIO and senior vice president Steve Horan sent an email to employees and contractors. They need to change the password within 24 hours. Also, they will be blocked from installing software on a computer till investigation completes. It came to know about the breach from Visa and MasterCard.
Verifone spokesman Andy Payment mentioned that breach didn’t affect payment services network. “We believe today that due to our immediate response, the potential for misuse of information is limited,” he said.
The attack has been traced to Russian hacking group.
As per the statement, “According to the forensic information to date, the cyber attempt was limited to controllers at approximately two dozen gas stations, and occurred over a short time-frame. We believe that no other merchants were targeted and the integrity of our networks and merchants’ payment terminals remain secure and fully operational.”
“The fact that Verifone asked employees and contractors to change their passwords and restricted their control over their desktops and laptops suggests that the attackers followed the usual path to gain access to critical systems such as payment terminals: exploit different vulnerabilities to take control over the devices and the accounts of people already inside the company,” Balabit product manager Peter Gyongyosi told eSecurity Planet by email.
“This once again underscores the importance of a multi-layer, defense-in-depth approach to security,” Gyongyosi added. “Keeping endpoint devices completely secure, especially in a large enterprise, is an impossible task and organizations must prepare for situations where an attacker would gain access to internal accounts. Fine-grained access control and detailed monitoring of activities — especially those related to critical systems — and advanced analytics such as behavior analysis can help security teams gain an edge over the attackers.”
Fortune 1000 Security Performance is declining. Verifone is a member of the Fortune 1000.
“It is possible Fortune 1000 companies exhibit a higher frequency of system compromises due to having a large attack surface,” the report states. “Fortune 1000 companies tend to have a high number of employees, which often corresponds to more networked devices and more IP addresses owned. Criminals also may have more motivation to target these prominent companies as they manage PII, PCI and intellectual property.”
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