Russian teen created BlackPOS malware used to hack Target, Neiman Marcus data: report

A photo of the 17-year-old alleged Target credit card hacker, who has ties to St. Petersburg, Russia.   A 17-year-old Russian national from St. Petersburg was responsible for the malicious programing that allowed for data from Target and Neiman Marcus to be compromised, according to a California-based security firm.

IntelCrawler said in a blog post Friday that it identified the creator, who they said wasn't responsible for the security breaches of the two retailers, but rather sold the software to cybercriminals throughout Eastern Europe.

Beth Stabner. New York Daily News.

http://intelcrawler.com/about/press08

"17-years-old teenager is the author of BlackPOS/Kaptoxa malware (Target), several other breaches may be revealed soon"

The massive data breach at Target during the 2013 holiday shopping season which the retailer now admits affected 70 million customers used an inexpensive "off the shelf" malware known as BlackPOS. The same malware may have also been involved in the Neiman Marcus attack.

Security researchers from IntelCrawler, a Los-Angeles based cyber intelligence company, announced that the age of BlackPOS malware author is close to 17 years old and the first sample of it was created in March 2013. The first report on this malware was done in the beginning of spring by Andrew Komarov, IntelCrawler CEO, when he was working in another forensics company.