Russian cybercriminals have infiltrated systems at Micros, an Oracle division that is one of the world’s biggest vendors of point of sale payment systems for shops and restaurants, according to an influential security blogger.
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The security breach was first reported Monday by the Krebs on Security website, which said the size and scope of the break-in was still under investigation and it was unclear how long the attackers had access to the Oracle systems. At the time of the acquisition in 2014, Oracle said the software was running at 330,000 customer sites in 180 countries.
Hundreds of systems have supposedly been breached, with customer support portals also affected.
Oracle bought the point-of-sale terminal maker in 2014.
In a statement addressed to Micros customers, Oracle confirmed that it has “detected and addressed malicious code in certain legacy Micros systems”, and said that it was requiring customers to change passwords for all accounts.
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“To prevent a recurrence, Oracle implemented additional security measures for the legacy MICROS systems”, Oracle said in a letter to customers quoted by CNBC. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. If the hackers intercepted point-of-sale information, they would gain access to customer names and card numbers but presumably not any other information, although that can’t be positively determined until more is known about the breach. If that were to happen, the attackers could potentially place malware created to collect credit card information onto those systems, making off with details of each credit card swiped at the point-of-sale station.
