Hacks of the Month —January 2020 Edition
Last updated on March 11th, 2024 at 01:12 am
The new year is coming in strong with security issues on a continual rise. I woke up this morning with my inbox flooded with questions on “why are companies continually being hacked!” Furthermore, it is even an understatement for me to add that data breaches and security vulnerabilities are causing companies to revisit their security measures. This is what led me to the Hacks of the Month — January 2020 Edition.
Hacks of the Month — January 2020 Edition
Card Readers Hacked
The new slogan has finally arrived, “Don’t swipe your Debit Cards at the gas station.” Just out of the press this month, Visa released a statement warning cardholders not to use debit cards at the pump terminals. Visa continued to state, “The company is aware of POS Malware being deployed on the networks of five North American fuel dispenser merchants.” Furthermore, Visa Payment Fraud Disruption (PFD) teams said, “cybercrime groups appear to have found a weak spot in how gas-station and gas-pump operators work.”
This can be alarming news as most of us use our debit cards to pay for gas. The question, what should we do? The answer, “we highly suggest using cash or a credit card for payment at any gas station without a chip reader.” Now, for the good news! All gas stations have until October 2020 to upgrade their chip readers. So, until then, take the precautions mentioned above and you will be fine.
Restaurant Company POS Malware Hack
The dining company, Laundry, which owns many franchise restaurants like Del Frisco’s Grill, Rainforest Cafe, plus many more, discloses a data breach of more than 60 restaurants. This data breach targeted the restaurants POS systems (point-of-sale) with POS malware. The POS malware was able to read and track data on older card entry systems. See below, the data that was exposed with customers cards:
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- IP addresses
- locations
- customer email addresses
- cardholder’s name & card number
- expiration date
- and internal verification codeMicrosoft support agent emails
Let Continue with the Hacks of the month — January 2020 Edition
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Microsoft Data Breach
Even the historic Microsoft announced this month that 250 million customer records were exposed due to a server misconfiguration. A security researcher noticed that the set of users’ data was stored on five different servers for a span of two days. The mega company apologized for the incident and secured the data.
The End of Windows 7 Security Updates
The end is finally coming for Windows 7 security updates. Microsoft made it clear this month that they will no longer offer support or security patches for Windows 7. So, for support and security, all PC users will need to definitely upgrade to Windows 10. Further, if you have not purchased a Windows 10 license to be installed, reach out to us and we will be glad to help. If you do have Windows 10 license and would like assistance, contact us to schedule a drop-off date and we can get you upgraded in the same day in most cases. OR, feel free to send us a message on our contact us page!
