General News
UPS Falls Victim of PoS Malware
United Parcel Service (UPS), a shipping and courier giant, has confirmed a long-running data breach at 51 of its UPS Stores, across 24 states in the United States.
While the number of affected stores accounted for only total about 1% of its more than 4,400 locations, as many as 105,000 customer transactions may have been compromised thanks to the sheer length of the malware infection: it ran between January and August of this year.
According to reports by InfoSecurity, the thieves are believed to have made off with names, postal addresses, email addresses and credit- and debit-card data.
Worryingly, the government alerted the company to the malware—UPS’ own systems did not detect it. UPS has since hired a security firm to review and upgrade its systems.
“As soon as we became aware of the potential malware intrusion, we deployed extensive resources to quickly address and eliminate this issue. Our customers can be assured that we have identified and fully contained the incident,” said Tim Davis, president of the UPS Store subsidiary, in a statement.
However, the inability to catch the issue is, well, an issue. “The first malware infection recorded by UPS was on January 20, 2014 and lasted until August,” said Joshua Cannell, malware intelligence analyst at Malwarebytes Labs, in a comment to InfoSecurity Magazine.
“In order to avoid detection for such a long period, a custom and highly-targeted piece of malware must have been used, as most traditional malware wouldn’t survive a week without being detected by antivirus and anti-malware vendors. This type of malware is often produced by well-funded groups that carefully plan their attack by surveying weakness in the target and then building malware to exploit them.”
Also, the locations each run on independent private networks that are walled off from the corporate network, UPS said.
This is the cause of some consternation—in previous breaches, the hackers were able to use a third-party contractor, unwitting insiders or some other means to enter the main network, and install PoS scraping software at individual locations from there. Clearly, the cybercriminals’ operation is evolving.
“This shows that sophistication of IT isn’t an inoculation against a breach,” said Steve Hultquist, chief evangelist at RedSeal Networks.
“The combination of complexity and continuous change–including both growth and technological advancement–mean that it’s virtually impossible to be aware of all the potential paths of attack. It is critical for all enterprises to deploy not only reactive security analysis but also to use a cyber-attack prevention system to analyze their entire network as it is actually implemented to anticipate all potential paths and to provide guidance in plugging inappropriate holes. The situation will continue to expand and become more broad. Enterprises must take action to avoid being the next casualties.”
Overall, PoS breaches seem to be reaching epidemic levels, with a string of incidents dating back to last Thanksgiving hitting household name retailers: Supervalu grocery stores, Target, Neiman Marcus, PF Changs, and on and on.
The New York Times cited a government source in reporting that the same group of Eastern European criminals are behind several of them.
Researchers had an air of exasperation in commenting on the incident. “How many more point of sale breaches need to occur industry-wide before consumers rise up and start demanding proactive protection surrounding their personal information prior to the purchasing of goods and services from a company?” Kyle Kennedy, CTO of STEALTHbits Technologies, told Infosecurity.
“Is it time for a third-party service provider focused solely on financial transactions and securing the consumer’s personal information the answer for the consumer AND the retailer? Or is the risk of personal information potentially being breached so accepted by consumers that change isn’t possible? I refuse to believe, as a consumer and a security executive, that change isn’t possible around one of the most fundamental components of business – the buying of goods and services via credit cards.”
Eric Chiu, president & co-founder of HyTrust, suggested that in the meantime, consumers need to be hyperaware of how they’re using their cards.
“Major breaches are being reported weekly, sometimes daily,” he said in an email. “Attackers are using sophisticated attacks to either compromise PoS systems at physical stores or branches as well as gaining access to corporate networks to siphon off millions of customer records in centralized systems in the core of the data center. Consumers need to…be careful who they do business with and what information they share on the Internet as well as keep an eye on their finances to identify if they might be a victim of a recent breach.”
Dangote Petroleum Refinery is reportedly nearing completion of a $2.5 billion private placement that values the company at about $40 billion ahead of its planned public listing.
Private placement is the direct sale of company shares or bonds to pre-selected investors instead of the general public and it is used to raise money quickly while avoiding strict public reporting rules.
People familiar with the transaction said investors acquired as much as 6 per cent of the refinery, according to a BusinessDay report.
The reported terms would value the business at approximately $40 billion.
Neither Dangote Group nor the refinery has publicly announced the final amount raised, the identities of most subscribers or the precise percentage sold.
The figures should therefore be treated as transaction details supplied by unnamed sources rather than confirmed company disclosures.
The reported $2.5 billion total is nevertheless significant as it indicates strong demand for exposure to a privately controlled refinery that has rapidly become central to Nigeria’s fuel supply and an increasingly important exporter of petroleum products.
The placement was said to have attracted more demand than the available shares, allowing the company to secure substantially more than the amount initially associated with the fundraising exercise.
Femi Otedola, chairman, First HoldCo, is the only major participant publicly identified in the report.
He reportedly committed $100 million to the transaction and sold his investment in Geregu Power Plc to finance the acquisition.
Nigeria’s pension industry was also reportedly cleared to participate.
Access to more than $17 billion in retirement assets would broaden the refinery’s potential investor base beyond wealthy individuals and conventional institutional buyers.
Participation by Pension Fund Administrators would, however, require careful attention to valuation, liquidity and portfolio-concentration limits.
Retirement funds must balance the attraction of a large Nigerian industrial asset against their responsibility to protect contributors’ savings.
The implied $40 billion valuation represents investor expectations about the refinery’s future earnings rather than only the physical cost of constructing the facility.
Its ability to process 650,000 barrels of crude daily gives it a central role in supplying Nigeria and other markets, but its commercial performance remains connected to crude availability, product prices, exchange rates and regulation.
The refinery has struggled to obtain all the Nigerian crude it requires under the government’s naira-for-crude arrangement.
It has consequently purchased some feedstock internationally and recently moved local petroleum-product pricing into dollars to align sales revenue more closely with its foreign-currency expenses.
Those constraints will be important during any public offering.
Prospective shareholders will want greater clarity on crude-supply contracts, debt, operating margins, export revenue and the company’s relationship with Nigerian regulators.
It is also unclear whether the private placement involved newly issued shares, a sale by existing owners or a combination of both.
That distinction determines whether the reported $2.5 billion becomes fresh capital for the refinery or proceeds received by selling shareholders.
The transaction could provide a useful price reference for the planned initial public offering.
Federal government will next month launch Nigeria’s first national organized crime strategy to strengthen the country’s response to terrorism, cybercrime, human and drug trafficking, kidnapping, illicit financial flows, and other forms of organized crime.
Major General Adamu Laka, national coordinator of the National Counter Terrorism Centre under the Office of the National Security Adviser, disclosed this in Abuja during the validation of the strategy document.
He said the strategy provides a coordinated national framework for tackling organized crime through improved intelligence sharing, stronger collaboration among security agencies, and closer cooperation with the criminal justice system, civil society organizations, and international partners.
Major General Laka explained that the document was developed through a partnership involving the Federal Government, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the United States Government, and other stakeholders.
Speaking at the event, Cheikh Toure, UNODC representative, said the strategy would strengthen Nigeria’s capacity to combat transnational crimes, including drug trafficking, cybercrime, human trafficking, kidnapping, and illicit financial flows.
Also speaking, Douglas Grane, acting director of the United States Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, reaffirmed the U.S. government’s support for Nigeria’s efforts to tackle organized crime through stronger inter-agency and international cooperation.
Representatives of the National Institute for Strategic Studies, the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit, and the National Cyber Security Centre also endorsed the initiative, describing it as a major step towards improving Nigeria’s fight against organized crime.
FATE Foundation, with funding from the Citi Foundation, has launched the Youth Entrepreneurship Incubation Programme to equip young people in Nigeria with financial literacy and entrepreneurship skills.
Delivered through free, safe, and accessible platforms, the programme supports the incubation and scaling of youth-led enterprises, enabling income generation and job creation.
In October 2025, FATE Foundation was selected as a recipient of Citi Foundation’s 2025 Global Innovation Challenge to Accelerate Youth Employability. Joining the cohort of 50 organisations globally, the Foundation will receive $500,000 over two years to advance its youth employability initiative.
“We are excited to be selected for Citi Foundation’s 2025 Global Innovation Challenge,” said Ayomide Akindolie-Igwe, Executive Director of FATE Foundation.
“This support enables us to equip young entrepreneurs in Nigeria with the financial literacy and skills needed to build and scale sustainable businesses.”
The programme addresses youth employability by tackling Africa’s growing jobs crisis. By 2030, the African continent will be home to 40% of the world’s youth, and with one in three under 35 already unemployed, this initiative will support Nigerian youth with a two-phase approach. It begins with financial literacy training before progressing to entrepreneurship development, incubation support, and access to tools needed to build viable, job-creating businesses.
“Through this innovative initiative, FATE Foundation is supporting low-income Nigerian youth to develop essential financial and entrepreneurial skills using accessible platforms.
“This support is not just helping individuals to succeed; it is building a solid foundation for sustainable enterprises that will drive job creation and contribute significantly to our nation’s economic vitality. This initiative is empowering and investing in the future of Nigeria, one youth at a time,” said Nneka Enwereji, MD/CEO Citibank Nigeria Limited.
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