U.S. Govt. Appears To Have Nabbed Kurupt.su Carding Kingpin 44
tsu doh nimh writes "The Justice Department on Monday announced the arrest of a Dutch man wanted for coordinating the theft of roughly 44,000 credit card numbers. The government hasn't released many details about the accused, except for his name and hacker handle, 'Fortezza.' But data from a variety of sources indicates that Fortezza was a lead administrator of Kurupt.su, a large, recently-shuttered forum dedicated to carding and Internet fraud. Krebsonsecurity.com provides some background on Fortezza, who 'claimed to be "quitting the scene," but spoke often about finishing a project with which he seemed obsessed: to hack and plunder all of the other carding forums.'"
Re:the banks win, again (Score:5, Interesting)
this hero of the people taking from the evil banks and redistributing back to the little people will never lose
It was credit card fraud. The only people that lose are the shops who take credit cards and maybe a few rich people who don't check their statements.
If the banks were losing out from this though would change the credit card system.
Credit card fraud treated as Identity Theft in US (Score:3, Interesting)
One huge problem is the FBI decided that credit card fraud - any type - is "Identity Theft" and that is how their reporting structure works. This hugely inflates the amount of "Identity Theft" that is reported giving a big leg up to the probably bigger scam artists at Lifelock. No matter how much credit card fraud costs merchants, the number is dwarfed by the amount of money going to Lifelock and other "identity protection" thieves.
Now, who really is affected by credit card fraud? Certainly not the banks - fraudulent charges are simply charged back to the merchant. Does it hurt the card holder? Well, not really. If you get a charge on your bill that you didn't make you do not have to pay it. Most of the time the credit card company is already aware of the fraudulent use and has taken such charges off the bill. Now, the card company almost certainly will want to change the card number and set you a new card and that can be somewhat inconvenient, but that is about it. Well, what about the merchant? If you are in the business of taking credit cards for almost any retail business you have insurance that covers this sort of thing. The merchant is paying for this insurance, so they might as well use it. I guess we are all paying a little bit for this because the merchants might save a few pennies on their general business insurance if they didn't need this coverage. So figure that when you go to a store you are paying $0.000001 more to cover the credit card fraud insurance.
So who loses? The insurance company? Not really. The merchant that is silly enough not to have insurance? Probably. Certainly nobody else is losing anything in this which is why it is not prosecuted in the US - nobody actually using a fraudulent card ever gets even arrested. They do take the card away if you are using a fake card, which obviously doesn't apply when credit card fraud is done through the Internet.
So really this is almost a vicimless crime that affects nobody. So your credit card number is used fraudulently... big deal... get a new card and move on.
Did you know that a fresh credit card number is worth about $0.50 on the open market today? This means that every time you use a card with a human involved it is a good chance they are collecting card numbers. A guy working in a restaurant can make an extra $50 a week easily just collecting numbers and such from cards handed over by customers. There is little risk with this as at worst he might get fired if caught. The police will not even arrest someone for this sort of activity.
Yes, I get a credit card used fraudulently at least once a year. I get a call about some silly charge that someone tried to make and they take it off the bill. End of story. The guy this posting is about is evidently higher up the food chain enough that someone thinks he is worth prosecuting, but I doubt it goes anywhere. There just isn't anyone losing out enough to justify spending anyone's time and money prosecuting folks like this. So it will continue and get more and more prevalent.