Your on to something very ugly. Credit card bustout schemes cost banks in the hundreds of millions each year the funds being stolen are going to organized Pakastani gangs (aka terrorists), Armenian gangs, and now Eastern European gang (aka Nation States). Credit card aquirers pass on the expenses in the form of high interchange fees that are eventually absorbed by businesses and consumers. Stolen cards and ID theft are used to ring up the fraudulent sales at fly-by-night businesses. The money is moved out before the charge-backs and charge offs are discovered. A much bigger problem exists here. There is a bill in Congress now that may help.

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The financial world is a weird one, it’s nice to see some sunlight and transparency on these issues: most people don’t know they exist.

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PJ, as a financial industry employee I can answer why that transaction got flagged. Criminals with stolen card data love purchasing prepaid phones and minutes. They also frequent iTunes and even Walmart (a good source of gift cards). Our debit card monitoring has to constantly flag these seemingly innocent merchants (usually depending on amount and/or time compared to usual activity) due to the criminals trying to make their transactions look as normal as possible.

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It doesn’t say where the card data was stolen from, but it was probably purchased on the black market. Could have come from anywhere. That’s why card issuers need to be on alert for suspicious transactions.

Because the merchant account is supposedly setup in Europe, banks and processors in Europe need to be on the lookout for suspicious batch settlements. I wonder though if that info was a decoy? But then why bother when everyone was already at a baseline level of alertness?

The criminals have basically shot themselves in the foot if it isn’t false info. Having access to a merchant business account to perform settlement doesn’t mean they instantly have money in pocket or a tangible item purchased that can be sold. They still need to get the money received and launder it. The Visa alert should make it a non-event since all the charges can be reversed before the criminals get their hands on the money.

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All I know, is that in my honey pot, they work. I’m not being paid for this, and they are all freely available, so I have no ax to grind.

My only gripe is with Comodo not being compatible with MPAA ruled DRM. Hollywood must be allowed to spy on me if I want to enjoy their entertainment. If you block it, the blu-ray, or media center shuts down.

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I cannot argue that the companies you mention have made great strides, what I am against with the too harsh phrase is the blame the user attitude when many users have tried to keep abreast with current AV solutions and other product updates too.

The enterprise I work for has had fake AV pop up, right past all of the high tech unmentionables that we thought were keeping us safe. They were ineffective against the morphing threatscape.

Glad to hear the good changes talk, but it remains propaganda imo.

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Patrick;

I disagree; the code changes in some of the best security software has been more dramatic in just the past 6 months than I’ve seen in the past two years!

Some cloud based companies have gone to what is apparently a mode to fight fire with fire. They install like – and act like a root-kit so they can deal with the malware on the same level as some of the nastiest crack-ware on the web.

Everything from using virtualization to complete kernel changes on their heuristic engines has completely changed the landscape on the good guy’s side of the equation.

I’ve seen the most dramatic changes in four of these companies; Comodo,MBAM, Alwil, and Lavasoft.

MalewareBytes Anti-Malware has had several kernel changes in just the last three months!!

So far – as long as I keep all applications updated; my various defenses are winning in the honeypot war; and my RAM usage has dropped half a gigabyte!

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Too harsh.

Professional antivirus hasn’t kept up with the morphing threatscape, nor have the benevolent mass producers of security holey software, operating systems and browsers/readers included.

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