Four people were charged with remotely hacking into point-of-sale systems to steal payment card data.
The four suspects, all Romanian nationals, were charged in the District of New Hampshire for allegedly using remote-desktop software to access more than 200 point of sale systems, Wired.com's Threat Level blog
The indictment, which names the Subway sandwich chain as one of the victims, says the four allegedly broke into the point-of-sale systems by guessing their passwords or using software to crack the passwords.
Wired.com reported that the incident is similar to one in a class action brought by several restaurants against Radiant Systems, a point of sale system maker. In that suit, the plaintiffs say the vendor did not use proper security to guard payment data against a Romanian hacker.
The plaintiffs alleged that the retailer that installed the Radiant systems, Computer World, did not properly patch the point of sale software and did not choose secure passwords, Wired.com reported.
In one instance, the default login was "administrator" and the password was "computer," one of the plaintiffs told Wired.com.
Wired.com stressed that despite the similarities, it could not confirm if the New Hampshire charges are connected to the class action involving Radiant and Computer World.
