16-Year Old Reportedly Wrote the Malware Code That Led to Target's Data Breach (TGT)

From MarketWatch:

The data breach that has gotten many consumers skittish about using their cards and hurt retailer Target Corp.’s TGT -0.10% reputation and sales may be traced to a Russian teenager who authored the malware used in the security breach, according to a cyber-intelligence firm.

IntelCrawler, based in Los Angeles, said the close-to-17-year-old Sergey Taraspov is a well-known programmer of malicious code in the underground world.  The cyber intelligence firm added the BlackPOS malware is an inexpensive “off the shelf” malware, which it said may also have been involved in the Neiman Marcus attack. It said it has uncovered six other breaches, including two small clothing firms in Los Angeles and four medium sized department stores in  Colorado, Arizona, New York and California, said IntelCrawler CEO Andrew Komarov in an interview, declining to specify the names of the four retailers, citing an ongoing active investigation....MORE