July 17, 2019

“It takes a certain kind of man with a certain reputation
To alleviate the cash from a whole entire nation…”

KrebsOnSecurity has seen some creative yet truly bizarre ads for dodgy services in the cybercrime underground, but the following animated advertisement for a popular credit card fraud shop likely takes the cake.

The name of this particular card shop won’t be mentioned here, and its various domain names featured in the video have been pixelated so as not to further promote the online store in question.

But points for knowing your customers, and understanding how to push emotional buttons among a clientele that mostly views America’s financial system as one giant ATM that never seems to run out of cash.

WARNING: Some viewers may find this video disturbing. Also, it is almost certainly Not Safe for Work.

The above commercial is vaguely reminiscent of the slick ads produced for and promoted by convicted Ukrainian credit card fraudster Vladislav “BadB” Horohorin, who was sentenced in 2013 to serve 88 months in prison for his role in the theft of more than $9 million from RBS Worldpay, an Atlanta-based credit card processor. (In February 2017, Horohorin was released and deported from the United States. He now works as a private cybersecurity consultant).

The clip above is loosely based on the 2016 music video, “Party Like a Russian,” produced by British singer-songwriter Robbie Williams.

Tip of the hat to Alex Holden of Hold Security for finding and sharing this video.


24 thoughts on “Party Like a Russian, Carder’s Edition

  1. Eric A.

    So… boss walks past as PM Angela Merkel rolls onto the screen.

    I look over and say ‘its German.. you wouldn’t understand’.

      1. Rob Shein

        No…the boss says…

        “Ah, bien sur! Les allemands sont fous, non?”

  2. Dennis

    To be honest I’m not really following whatever-that-was. How is it even connected to the Carder business? This looks like a poorly made Communist skit on the Capitalist system. What they get fed on the state run TV every day.

  3. lou ferreira

    Brian, I hope you don’t mind but I re-blogged this interesting article. Let me know if that is a problem. Thank you, excellent post.

    1. BrianKrebs Post author

      Thanks, Lou, but I’m generally not wild about people taking my blog posts and republishing them wholesale. Fair use is okay, and that generally means excerpting a few sentences or paragraphs and then linking to the source.

      1. mok

        Wah wah the video is not yours, a few lines commentary who cares…

        1. WhiskeyOscarWhiskey

          I can guarantee you that if you were some form of content creator (YouTube, blogs, etc.) you wouldn’t be a happy camper if someone stole your content. Imagine that you created a video which got 3,000 views. What if I stole that, re-uploaded it to my account, and I got 5,000,000 views? I’m confident that you would be pretty unhappy as I’m taking money and traffic from your video. This is very similar.

          Regardless of if this article is “few lines of commentary”, there is still a lot of time, research, verification, etc. that goes into posting just one article. Brian puts in the time, work, and dedication, yet someone copy/pastes that and gets credit for it? Doesn’t seem fair to me (unless you’re Bernie Sanders). It makes complete sense and I fully agree with Brian.

        2. Dennis

          That video does not belong to those scammers either. They stole most of it from someone called Robbie Williams. Search it on YouTube, you’ll see.

  4. Richard

    Great stuff. A glimpse into the minds of those people. But I want to ask a simplistic question, a naive question. When will it end? There must be “A Way”. Old saying, we can fly to the moon but we can’t fix this? So many people are victimized and it’s getting worse, everything from carding, ransomware to scam telephone calls….when will it ever end? Back about 1984 as many people did I foresaw some of this but I remember thinking, “oh by about 2000 they’ll have it figured out”. Boy was I wrong. It’s worse than ever, seems to me. Who isn’t doing their job? Call them out. What are the solutions? I’d like to know.

    1. Dennis

      Yes, the end will come when they put you 6-ft under.

      1. Liesl

        Unfortunately, no. Your death is the gift that keeps on giving, much like parents having kids nowadays. New targets within the marketplace, ya know…they’re all “eligible” for brand spanking new credit card accounts!

    2. Anon404

      When? When will the US stop trying to make war in the middle east? When will Russia stop trying to invade and take back the old Soviet Republic? When will China stop stealing economic and military secrets? When? WW3, thats when.

    3. vb

      The lure of easy money will never end. It doesn’t matter if it’s legal or ethical. Wealth without work, or very little work, will always attract a segment of the population.

    4. illumina23

      Fraud has been with us for a very long time now. When will it end, you ask?

      Maybe it will end when humanity lets go of the idea of ownership.

    5. Catwhisperer

      End? Why, if you postulate that banks may be in on it. Not in it directly, mind, but in it because they profit nonetheless from the fraud. Banks never pay, it’s us that pay, always. So do you want to swallow the blue pill or the red pill? Banks don’t launder money, but recently a cargo ship owned by a bank that couldn’t fail wound up being seized in the US for carrying 20 tons of cocaine. Same organizations that got bailed out by the US taxpayer so that now you can collect 0.01% interest on your savings account. ROTFFL!

      If losses came out of the bonuses and perks of banking CEOs, CFOs and CTOs, I would wager that it would stop within a month…

  5. MattyJ

    I’ve seen worse production values on network TV. Nice. Ha ha.

  6. Notme

    Hilarious,
    Thanks Hold Security! Publish the crazy ads you see in a book about more crazy Russians. Of course they would never mess with our election, too busy making money.

  7. A[nonymous]

    Lots of great articles this week, Brian!
    As an aspiring cybersecurity researcher (currently a lowly intern for a law firm) your articles keep me sane between answering security-illiterate lawyers’ questions and updating email filters.

    -A

  8. this

    Great article. I am going through some of these issues as well..

  9. Readership1

    I came. I saw. I didn’t get it.

    This flew over my head.

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