Mastermind of Target Hacking Identified (allhackersnews.com)

A 17-year-old from Russia created the malicious software that allowed shoppers’ data from Target and Neiman Marcus to be stolen, a California-based security firm says, and the hackers’ attacks haven’t yet ended. The teen was identified in a blog post from IntelCrawler as being a 17-year-old Russian national from St. Petersburg, reports The New York Daily News. He wasn’t directly responsible for the two major retailers’ security breaches, but did sell his software throughout Eastern Europe, says IntelCrawler CEO Andrew Komarov. Target and Neiman Marcus’ accounts were hacked after the malware, called “BlackPOS” used several easy passwords to hack stores’ registers remotely. In the Target case, security was breached following Black Friday and affected up to 110 million customers who used credit or debit cards. Target says names, mailing addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses were taken in the attack. It is offering its customers free credit monitoring and store credit in response to the incident. But Target may have lost many of its customers’ trust through the attacks. The company last week sent an email to offer a year’s worth of free credit monitoring and identity theft through Experian, but many customers believe the email is a hoax.