The Hacker Economy
Feb. 19th, 2007 01:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
paserbypThe FBI sees true organized crime in parts of the hacking community, particularly in Eastern Europe, says special agent Chris Stangl, who works in the bureau's cybercrime division, the agency's third largest behind counter-terrorism and intelligence.
1. Trojan program to steal online account information - from $980 to $4900;
2. Credit card number with PIN - $490;
3. Billing data, including account number, address, SSN, home address, and birth date - from $78 - $294;
4. Driver license - $147;
5. Birth certificate - $147;
6. Social Security card - $98;
7. Credit card number with security code and expiration date - from $6 - $24;
8. PayPal account logon and password - $6;
One forum, CardingWorld.cc has more than 100,00 posts from 13,000 registered members, most of whom write in Russian.
On January 25, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged a 21-year-old Florida man with breaking into numerous online brokerage accounts, then liquidating their portfolios. Investigators say Aleksey Kamardin of Tampa, during a five-week span last summer, made more than $82,000 by using funds in multiple compromised accounts at Charles Schwab, E-Trade, JPMorgan Chase, TD Ameritrade and other online brokers to by shares in lightly traded companies. Those purchases give the illusion of increased legitimate trading, which raised the stocks price. Kamardin then sold the shares he had purchased earlier, and other legit investors saw the stock price fall sharply, investigators say.
It's variation on the old "pump-and-dump" stock scam. In these scenarios, the thief have invested in cheap, or penny, stocks using accounts based in the Cayman Island or elsewhere offshore, where the accounts can be established anonymously. Once the thief buys or steals identity information, he can set up fraudulent accounts - or break into other people's accounts, as in the case of Kamardin - and buy large quantities of those penny stocks, driving up the price.
"The people I've spoken to in Eastern Europe are actually pretty young guys, in their 20s",- says a Web application security consultant who goes by the name RSnake. "Some have formal education, but some don't. Some live in countries like Romania, where houses have more Internet throughput than some businesses in the U.S. They've grown up on the Internet for the past 10 years, and the laws in their contries are less stringent than in other places, like the U.S."
1. Trojan program to steal online account information - from $980 to $4900;
2. Credit card number with PIN - $490;
3. Billing data, including account number, address, SSN, home address, and birth date - from $78 - $294;
4. Driver license - $147;
5. Birth certificate - $147;
6. Social Security card - $98;
7. Credit card number with security code and expiration date - from $6 - $24;
8. PayPal account logon and password - $6;
One forum, CardingWorld.cc has more than 100,00 posts from 13,000 registered members, most of whom write in Russian.
On January 25, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged a 21-year-old Florida man with breaking into numerous online brokerage accounts, then liquidating their portfolios. Investigators say Aleksey Kamardin of Tampa, during a five-week span last summer, made more than $82,000 by using funds in multiple compromised accounts at Charles Schwab, E-Trade, JPMorgan Chase, TD Ameritrade and other online brokers to by shares in lightly traded companies. Those purchases give the illusion of increased legitimate trading, which raised the stocks price. Kamardin then sold the shares he had purchased earlier, and other legit investors saw the stock price fall sharply, investigators say.
It's variation on the old "pump-and-dump" stock scam. In these scenarios, the thief have invested in cheap, or penny, stocks using accounts based in the Cayman Island or elsewhere offshore, where the accounts can be established anonymously. Once the thief buys or steals identity information, he can set up fraudulent accounts - or break into other people's accounts, as in the case of Kamardin - and buy large quantities of those penny stocks, driving up the price.
"The people I've spoken to in Eastern Europe are actually pretty young guys, in their 20s",- says a Web application security consultant who goes by the name RSnake. "Some have formal education, but some don't. Some live in countries like Romania, where houses have more Internet throughput than some businesses in the U.S. They've grown up on the Internet for the past 10 years, and the laws in their contries are less stringent than in other places, like the U.S."
