Update: About 24 hours after this report was published, BMC issued a statement that said in part: "BMC has confirmed that the password mentioned in the press is not a BMC-generated password. At this point, there is nothing to suggest that BMC BladeLogic or BMC Performance Assurance has a security flaw or was compromised as part of this attack."
Widely used management software running on Target's internal network may have given an important leg-up to attackers who compromised 40 million payment cards belonging to people who recently shopped at the retail giant, according to an article published Wednesday by KrebsonSecurity.
As journalist Brian Krebs reported two weeks ago, malware that infected Target's point-of-sale terminals used the account name "Best1_user" and the password "BackupU$r" to log in to a control server inside the Target network. The malware used the privileged insider access to temporarily stash payment card data siphoned out of the terminals used in checkout lines so it could then periodically be downloaded to a different service for permanent storage. In Wednesday's post, Krebs filled in some intriguing new details that suggest a poorly secured feature inside a widely used server management program may have played a role. Krebs explained:
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