[real-eyes] Call Centers for Computer Criminals
- From: Steve <kcpadfoot@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "real-eyes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <real-eyes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2010 09:45:40 -0500
The following is from Krebs On Security
www.krebsonsecurity.com
Steve
Call Centers for Computer Criminals
A call service that catered to bank and identity thieves has been busted
up by U.S.
and international authorities. The takedown provides a fascinating
glimpse into a
bustling and relatively crowded niche of fraud services in the criminal
hacker underground.
In an indictment unsealed on Monday, New York authorities said two
Belarusian nationals
suspected of operating a rent-a-fraudster service called
Callservice.biz
were arrested overseas. Wired.com’s Kim Zetter has
the lowdown
:
According to the
indictment
(.pdf), the two entrepreneurs launched the site in Lithuania in June
2007 and filled
a much-needed niche in the criminal world — providing English- and
German-speaking
“stand-ins” to help crooks thwart bank security screening measures.
In order to conduct certain transactions — such as initiating wire
transfers, unblocking
accounts or changing the contact information on an account — some
financial institutions
require the legitimate account holder to authorize the transaction by phone.
Thieves could provide the stolen account information and biographical
information
of the account holder to CallService.biz, along with instructions about
what needed
to be authorized. The biographical information sometimes included the
account holder’s
name, address, Social Security number, e-mail address and answers to
security questions
the financial institution might ask, such as the age of the victim’s
father when
the victim was born, the nickname of the victim’s oldest sibling or the
city where
the victim was married.
U.S. authorities have seized the Callservice.biz Web site, which now
features the
seals for the FBI and Justice Department prominently on its homepage.
The feds also
seized Cardingworld.cc, a highly-restricted online criminal forum where
Callservice.biz
was hosted.
If you spend any amount of time on underground forums like
Cardingworld.cc, however,
you’ll quickly discover that these criminal call centers are among the
most popular
of fraud services offered. For example, another fraud forum —
Verified.su — is home
to a number of calling services. Among them are two competing call
centers that each
began as point-and-click fraud shops that helped customers purchase
electronics with
stolen credit cards and then split the profits after selling the goods
on eBay.
aalliance540
One such service, Atlanta Alliance
, used to offer paying members a password-protected Web site where
customers could
select a range of high-priced gadgets — such as digital cameras, laptops
and smart
phones — that could be bought with stolen credit cards. The service even
allowed
customers to manage the shipment of these products to awaiting
“reshipping mules,”
individuals in the United States recruited for the purpose of receiving
stolen goods
and reshipping them to Russia, Ukraine and other nations where many
vendors refuse
to ship due to the high incidence of fraud from those areas.
Another service, offered by a Verified.su member called CallsManager
, began as a similar fraud shopping-and-shipping service called
Aegis Team
. The Aegis Team store, appropriately named the “Fraud Shop,” let
customers select
from a variety of name brand online stores from which to purchase
electronics, manage
the shipments to and from specific mules, and track the shipments every
step of the
way.
aegistrack540
aegisfraudshop540
AegisTeam appears to have closed up shop, but CallsManager still
advertises a call
center that charges just $10 per call, male or female. Atlanta Alliance
still advertises
the ability to purchase stolen goods on behalf of clients. It also
boasts more than
a dozen call center operators who specialize in contacting banks and
online stores
in the United States and Europe, promising “a personal approach to each
client.”
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 20th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
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