Retailers Urged to Defend Against ‘Backoff’ POS Malware

A payment card industry security consortium warned retailers on Wednesday of the urgency to secure their systems against "Backoff," a malicious software program that steals card numbers. Backoff "represents a very real threat to the security of cardholder data in all organizations," wrote the PCI Security Standards Council, an organization founded by MasterCard, Visa, American Express and other credit card companies. The U.S. Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security warned last week that 1,000 U.S. businesses may be infected by Backoff, which wasn't detected by most anti-virus security software until earlier this month.