Security researchers say sites such as eBay and Amazon are being roped into schemes by cyber-criminals to turn stolen credit card information into cash.
Stealing credit card information online doesn't mean much if that can't be
translated into real-world cash.
So just how do attackers do that? Lately, they have turned to
abusing auction sites such as eBay in a scheme F-Secure calls
"quickswapping."
In a quickswapping scheme, a cyber-crook
will use sites such as eBay or Amazon to
offer an expensive item at a cheap price, explained Mikko Hypponen,
chief research officer at F-Secure. After a deal is reached, the
scammer will make an enticing offer - they will agree to ship
the item to the buyer and only accept payment after the person has
checked it out.
Next, the scammer will use credit card information he or she previously pilfered with
malware such as Zeus to
purchase the item and send it to the buyer. After the buyer
sends the agreed payment via Western Union or WebMoney, the
scammer disappears, leaving the person whose card was stolen with an
illegal charge and the quickswapping buyer at risk of having
the item confiscated by police as stolen merchandise.
"Bottom line is that when everyday users go to online auctions and
look for good value, scenarios like this never occur to them," Hypponen
said. "They'd never imagine that the item they are bidding on might not
exist at all and instead they are laundering money for online
criminals."
While Hypponen said quickswapping is new, it is very similar to a
reshipping scam detailed here by
RSA, EMC's security arm. In that scenario, cyber-criminals hire "mules"
through legitimate job sites to reship items they receive overseas. The
mules who received the fraudulently purchased items often have no idea
they are doing anything illegal.
"As recently as two or three years ago,
these types of scams were
run by one to two individuals or groups, but as online fraud increases
in both numbers and sophistication there has become a growing need for
specialization within each portion of the scam," Joram Borenstein,
senior manager of identity protection and verification at RSA, told
eWEEK.
"This type of reshipping scam is one of a number of examples of how
attackers are laundering money and goods," he continued. "In this scam,
we see the use of mules - legitimate folks being duped into working for
an illegitimate organization. There (are) also money mules -
(these) are folks who agree to have money transferred into their
bank accounts, keep the portion of the money and send the rest onwards
to another bank account or deliver it through a money transfer
organization."
Some of the other more common ways attackers launder money include
online poker. Armed with stolen credit card details, scammers can
create new gaming accounts to play with, Hypponen explained.
"But he will go into a virtual poker table where all the other
players are his own accounts, and when he plays with the new account,
he plays badly on purpose - losing money, and thus moving it from the
stolen card to his own gaming account," he said. "These accounts can
now cash the money back to the real world and it all looks
normal....this mostly happens in Europe, Russia and elsewhere where
real-money gambling online is perfectly legal."
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