Drive by hacking

#132 In Miami, hackers are obtaining cardholder information on tens of thousands of customers through wireless networks in stores. The New York Times reports that thieves are singling out merchants with strong wireless signals and weakly protected data using a laptop computer enabled with a wireless networking receiver. The culprits robbed these stores of customer information for more than a month. After security upgrades were announced, or investigators showed up on the scene, the cyber-criminals just moved on to the next store already staked out.

Investigators point out that data security is not just the responsibility of major banks and corporations, but it also belongs to retail merchants.