USA’s biggest ID fraud cracked
It emerged yesterday that the US authorities charged 11 people in connection with the theft of 40 million credit card numbers and details. They allegedly hacked into the computer systems of several major US retailers and installed software to access account details and passwords. One retailer that was attacked was TJX (TK Maxx) who are not unfamiliar with being hacked / data leaking. I am just wondering if that being hacked link is the same case that was reported yesterday. Anyhow, I heard on the radio that the technique used was a combination of wireless networks and the software they installed was in fact sniffers, which monitored data transfers (which evidently were unencrypted).
In similar news, a petrol station cashier was caught cloning 500 debit and credit cards from his local village. He was simply using a cloning device to skim the numbers off. It was later revealed that he run a debt with a loan shark and was persuaded to install a skimming device to make money to pay off his loan.
This just shows you, you don’t have to be sophisticated and technical to get into a system. Good old school tricks like a skimming device is just as effective. There are lots of ways of doing things.