March 4, 2009
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How's the CC Fraud Business Doing?, Pt.1
Here's what they're up to.Business is good although, not as good as it could be. The credit card industry has been hampering the fraudsters' efforts and has been slowing them down. Not as much as they'd like to, however. They haven't been able, so far, to keep these credit card thieves from advancing in new directions that still threaten both consumers and credit card institutions.
As an indicator, back from 2007 the FTC (who monitor fraud reports) was showing 800,000 consumer credit card fraud and identity theft complaints in their "Commission's Consumer Sentinel". Consumer losses are reported to have been more than $1.2 billion. The most common complaints were of credit card fraud, which stood at 23%. Top on the list was identity theft.
In the war against this, new initiatives are being taken, caused by the heightened scrutiny from institutions and their customers. Security vendor Finjan's CTO, Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chagrins us with dismal news that "you can Google 'sell dumps,' and the result (at least in the US) will indicate many websites willing to sell. You can find price lists, card types, just about anything you like." Anyone in the world can buy stolen credit card identities from them. Credit and debit cards are the favorite.
Certainly, the problem doesn't stem from the US, alone. Foreign thieves enjoy the anonymity and immunity of operating out of under-developed and third-world countries most successfully. Outside of US law enforcement jurisdiction, they are practically home free. Some of their favorite credit card crime tools are:
o Scamming;
o Phishing;
o Vishing;
o "Packet sniffing";
o Pin Entry Device tampering;
o Spear Phishing;
o Counterfeiting and;
o SkimmingThey can actually compromise secure credit card networks with trojans that can intercept communications between an authentication processing server and a merchant who is running a credit authorization check.