This blog has featured several stories on reshipping scams, which recruit willing or unwitting U.S. citizens (“mules”) to reship abroad pricey items that are paid for with stolen credit cards. Today’s post highlights a critical component of this scheme: the black-market sale of international shipping labels fraudulently purchased from the U.S. Postal Service.
A new service offered in the cybercriminal underground is geared toward spammers, scammers and malware purveyors interested in mass-registering dozens of dodgy domains in one go.
A recent breach at billing and support software provider WHMCS that exposed a half million customer usernames, passwords — and in some cases credit cards — may turn out to be least of the company’s worries. According to information obtained by KrebsOnSecurity.com, for the past four months hackers have been selling an exclusive zero-day flaw that they claim lets intruders break into Web hosting firms that rely on the software.
Underground Web sites can be a useful barometer for the daily volume of criminal trade in goods like stolen credit card numbers and hijacked PayPal or eBay accounts. And if the current low prices at one of Underweb’s newer and… Read More »
Given the heightened security surrounding air travel these days, it may be hard to believe that fraudsters would try to board a plane using stolen tickets. But incredibly, there are a number of criminal travel agencies doing business in the underground, and judging from the positive feedback left by patrons, business appears to be booming.
The tickets often are purchased at the last minute and placed under the criminal buyer’s real name. The reservations are made using either stolen credit cards or hijacked accounts belonging to independent contractors in the travel industry. Customers are charged a fraction of the cost of the tickets and/or reservations, typically between 25 and 35 percent of the actual cost.
How much does it cost for thieves to discover the data that unlocks a person’s identity for creditors, such as your Social Security number, birthday, or mother’s maiden name? Would it surprise you to learn that crooks are selling this data to any and all comers for pennies on the dollar?
At least, that’s the going price at superget.info. This fraudster-friendly site has been operating since July 2010, and markets the ability to look up SSNs, DOBs, birthdays and other sensitive information on millions of Americans. Registration is free, and accounts are funded via WebMoney and Liberty Reserve, virtual currencies that are popular in the cybercriminal underground.
Once your account is funded, Superget lets users search for specific individuals by name, city, and state. Each “credit” costs USD$1, and a successful hit on a Social Security number or date of birth costs 3 credits each. Of course, the more credits you buy, the cheaper the searches are per credit. Six credits cost $4.99; 35 credits cost $20.99, and $100.99 buys you 230 credits. Customers with special needs to can avail themselves of the “reseller plan,” which promises 1,500 credits for $500.99, and 3,500 credits for $1000.99.
Almost a year ago, I wrote about ATM skimmers made of parts cannibalized from old MP3 players. Since then, I’ve noticed quite a few more ads for these MP3-powered skimmers in the criminal underground, perhaps because audio skimmers allow fraudsters to sell lucrative service contracts along with their theft devices.
Using audio to capture credit and debit card data is not a new technique, but it is becoming vogue: Square, an increasingly popular credit card reader built for the iPhone, works by plugging into the headphone jack on the iPhone and converting credit card data stored on the card into audio files.
I recently wrote about an online service that was selling access to stolen credit and debit card data. That post received a lot of attention, but criminal bazaars are a dime a dozen. The real news is that few of these fraud shops are secure enough to keep their stock of stolen data from being pilfered by thieves.
A new crimeware kit for sale on the criminal underground makes it a simple point-and-click exercise to develop malicious software designed to turn Mac OSX computers into bots. According to the vendor of this kit, it is somewhat interchangeable with existing crimeware kits made to attack Windows-based PCs.
When it’s time to book a vacation or a quick getaway, many of us turn to travel reservation sites like Expedia, Travelocity and other comparison services. But there’s a cybercrime-friendly booking service that is not well-known. When cyber crooks want to get away — with a crime — increasingly they are turning to underground online booking services that make it easy for crooks to rent hacked PCs that can help them ply their trade anonymously.
