Mobile security
As smartphones are a permanent point of access to the internet (mostly on), they can be compromised as easily as computers with malware. A malware is a computer program that aims to harm the system in which it resides. Trojans, worms and viruses are all considered malware. A Trojan is a program that is on the smartphone and allows external users to connect discreetly. A worm is a program that reproduces on multiple computers across a network. A virus is malicious software designed to spread to other computers by inserting itself into legitimate programs and running programs in parallel. However, it must be said that the malware are far less numerous and important to smartphones as they are to computers.
Point-of-sale malware
Point-of-sale malware (POS malware) is usually a type of malicious software (malware) that is used by cybercriminals to target point of sale (POS) and payment terminals with the intent to obtain credit card and debit card information, a card's track 1 or track 2 data and even the CVV code, by various man-in-the-middle attacks, that is the interception of the processing at the retail checkout point of sale system. The simplest, or most evasive, approach is RAM-scraping, accessing the system's memory and exporting the copied information via a remote access trojan (RAT) as this minimizes any software or hardware tampering, potentially leaving no footprints. POS attacks may also include the use of various bits of hardware: dongles, trojan card readers, (wireless) data transmitters and receivers. Being at the gateway of transactions, POS malware enables hackers to process and steal thousands, even millions, of transaction payment data, depending upon the target, the number of devices affected, and how long the attack goes undetected. This is done before or outside of the card information being (usually) encrypted and sent to the payment processor for authorization.