I sat down on Thursday with someone who watches the underground criminals who are trying to break into people's bank accounts and steal their money. And the picture isn't pretty.
Online fraudsters are coming up with more types of dangerous attacks and more sophisticated methods, says Uri Rivner, head of new technologies for RSA Consumer Solutions, which is owned by EMC.
I've already written about how the cybercriminals are borrowing organizational structures from the mafia and even legitimate businesses, and have further explored the threats from identity fraud. Rivner filled in some details with his assessment of how the fraudsters are operating. He talked about the "Fraud Supply Chain" in which harvesters steal the data and then sell it to people who are expert at turning the data into cash by emptying out the bank accounts.
The two sides of this e-commerce underground communicate via informal marketplaces on IRC Chat channels. They also share information on sites like "Carder's Market," where you can read industry blogs and even reviews of Trojans and other malware.
Fraudsters aren't just targeting bank customers. They are also luring victims off social networks, where they harvest sensitive private information, and online gaming sites, where they steal accomplished avatars and accounts and sell them for money, Rivner says.
Another recent trend is the blending of phishing and malware on spoof Web sites that look legitimate but prompt visitors to run an executable in order to see a video, for instance. Instead, the executable is a Trojan that can grab the sensitive data on the computer. The recent "Obama sex video" spam is an example of this. … Read more
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