Last year it was Target Corporation that became the target of hackers, who were successful in breaking the security system of the company and accessing a huge number of customer data. The data breach cost the retailer several millions of dollars to take corrective actions. It has not been the only company to suffer such attacks but many companies have since faced such theft of information from their systems.

The Federal Government says that it may have been only the beginning for such hacking incidents. The US Department of Homeland Security has warned businesses to be careful as hackers who are targeting customer data through malicious computer codes are on the rise.

Backoff is one of the latest software that is being used by the hackers which is threatening a significant number of businesses big as well says an review given by the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT).

CERT recommends all the companies administering systems of point-of-sale to checkout if Backoff is digging out information from their company's transactions and to report any such cases to the Secret Service.

In an advisory CERT said, "The impact of a compromised PoS system can affect both the businesses and consumer by exposing customer data such as names, mailing addresses, credit/debit card numbers, phone numbers and e-mail addresses to criminal elements."