The most high-profile hack in recent months has no doubt belonged to mega-retailer Target, which suffered the theft of over 40 million credit card numbers around Thanksgiving. The hack is still being investigated, but independent journalist Brian Krebs discovered "memory-scraping" malware hiding on Target's POS this week. You can find all the details in Dan Goodin's story, Point-of-sale malware infecting Target found hiding in plain sight.

Ars readers, of course, had plenty of theories as to how that malware got there. nijave wrote, "The registers probably either network boot or periodically contact a server to check for updated versions automatically. I'm guessing they compromised the server that the POS systems boot/get updates from. That system is probably fairly easily accessible. Running a network vulnerability scanner probably would find an exploitable server they could install their command and control server on. This could have been one of the inventory management servers the registers are allowed to communicate with."

Spazmodica had a more big-picture view: "Target got completely hosed on this. There definitely seems to be an insider element, plus a fair amount of incompetency. But aside from some IT staff who will lose their jobs, the only harm is to the consumers whose data has been compromised. The corporation itself won't face any real consequences, since it's perfectly legal to lose consumer data in the USA (unless it's medical data), and of course here in America corporate executives are never held accountable for anything." And Scallywag quipped, "POS systems are, indeed, well named."

stiltner had some interesting information to add, as well:

I haven't seen anyone bring this topic up yet. But over the past few months....say April-ish of 2013 and earlier, Target has been updating all the stuff in the back offices of their stores. Upgrading PC's to Win 7 etc, stuff like that. Lots of independent people have had lots of access to lots of things. I can speak from experience, that I've seen what I would consider sensitive company information on some of these chain stores' back office PC's. The fact that they just threw me the keys and said go for it, makes me think that there's too much trust with contractors. I realize they said this was a website hack, but my point is, there's many more holes in security in relation to these giant companies.

But Zathrus1 wouldn't have a problem going back to Target now: "As for shopping at Target—it's probably the safest place right now. Who's not safe? The ones that haven't been hit. Yet."

On Chrome OS look-alikes and noisy tabs

A couple of updates to Chrome brought joy and frustration in equal measure to our readers this week. First, Chrome's latest version includes a new tab feature that will indicate which of your tabs is playing a noise, should the annoying situation arise. Also, Google released it's Chrome OS-like Metro mode browser for Windows 8. Read about the updates in Peter Bright's article, Chrome’s Windows 8 Chrome OS-lookalike gets a stable release.

Our readers pretty solidly adored the first feature and were pretty skeptical of the second.

"Dang, so it was intentional and not just a placeholder to get that mode in the door," sidran32 wrote of the Windows 8 Chrome version. "Truthfully, I always saw it as them thumbing their nose at Microsoft for putting a tablet UI in a desktop OS. But I really wanted them to create a decent touch UI for tablet use. Right now, we still are stuck with only one good browser for tablet browsing on Windows 8, at least until Firefox's implementation gets out of alpha. Still a neat concept. I might have to revisit it to see how this Chrome OS-like thing works." firsttimeposter (who, we checked, has 631 posts) was more cynical. "Here is the problem. As long as Google bans their employees from using Windows as their main OS, they will not ever know how big of a clusterfuck Chrome is on touchscreens."

As for the video-indicating tab, Happysin wrote, "I would definitely vote those little icons as 'really fucking useful.' " A314InTheSky declared the icons, "Best idea of 2014. I'll pay a good chunk of money to any browser maker that lets me configure a no-sound and no-animations setting. Double the money if they figure a way to suppress ads. Triple if they annihilate trackware."

Coinye for the masses

These days, it seems like everyone has an altcoin. The creators of Coinye, however, provoked the legal arm of Kanye West's team, which is suing whoever is behind the altcoin for trademark infringement. So is Coinye just the pointless joke of a bunch of Internet trolls? Or is it meaningful satire? Our readership was split on the verdict after reading Cyrus Farivar's article, Coinye is dead, long live Coinye: Kanye West lawsuit prompts disarray.

Kaitlyn_ec was concerned that altcoins could weaken Bitcoin:

I wonder what effect, if any, this is having to crypto-currency as a group entity. With the fall of coinye (and other parody coins) due to their absurdity and seeming shock that the person they are parodying would try to stop them, does this mean that the currency as a whole could start becoming part of a much larger joke to serious investors and/or retailers? I mean it seems like I could create an arscoin or a fbcoin and laugh it up while waiting for the c&d letters to come rolling in, so doesn't that weaken and cheapen the idea of a crypto-currency as a whole? The idea for the currency remains the same but the coins that started it (bitcoin, dogecoin, what ever else there is now) are now linked to this running joke which only seems to hurt the brand rather than progress it.

Wolvenmoon, however, saw the jokey nature of Coinye as a way to put Bitcoin holders on more uncertain footing.

Dogecoin's still showing as more valuable to mine than litecoin by 53 percent according to http://www.dustcoin.com/. Who has more brand recognition among the economy's movers and shakers, Grumpy Cat or Donald Trump? It's exactly the joke value that's scaring off the older investors who're sitting on the vast majority of Bitcoins in the hopes that it'll become the next global currency that lends Dogecoin its value. I would wager (Actually I would if I were certain it were legal) that the majority of Bitcoins being held in inactive accounts are held by the 30+ crowd that sees Dogecoin as a joke entirely, whereas the majority of Dogecoin are likely held by the <30 crowd. Anyway, I'm certain that the people knocking the economic power of a joke will never have the last laugh.

JonDavid agreed, "In defense of Dogecoin, I would point out that lolcats/Cheezburger still has a healthy revenue several years after lolcat first appeared. The last figures I saw were about $4 million annual revenue with investments in the company of over $30 million. Although jokes and memes are difficult to compare I think there is still a lot of revenue potential in Doge and in the coin that provides a central focus for the community. Advertising companies could see a lot of positive feedback from targeted ads aimed at this community paid for in Dogecoin."

sonolumi wanted to clear up the meaning of the writing on Coinye's new logo (above). "The Chinese writing on the new coin seems to say 魚里 or fish inside. Not my native language, so forgive me if the translation is incorrect." wesley96 offered a hand though, "I forgive you. It's actually a single word: 鯉 (lǐ). It means carp."

"Oh well, my translation skills always have been a bit carp." sonolumi returned.