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Phishers Arrested In Eastern Europe and US
An anonymous reader writes to let us know about the roundup of a phishing gang by the FBI and authorities in Poland and Romania. 18 arrests were made in what the FBI calls "Operation Cardkeeper." The gang has allegedly been selling stolen identities and information on credit cards and bank accounts since at least 2004. To remind us what a drop in the bucket such international operations are, the article says: "The Anti-Phishing Working Group, an industry consortium, said more than 10,000 phishing Web sites were active on the Internet in August, about double the number of sites in January."
I see nowhere in the article a mention about Romania. I know we've had our share of online scam artists, but mentioning Romania any time something like this comes along is just plain ridiculous.
What the ***** is FBI doing in MY country? Since when we're 51st state? Who do they think they are?
We read about these busts quite frequently, but I wonder what percentage of these guys are actually convicted and jailed.
An anonymous reader writes to let us know about the roundup of a phishing gang by the FBI and authorities in Poland and Romania.
Poland and Romania have an FBI?
Have you read my journal today?
...then things are at an all-time high. I can hardly delete fake PayPal, eBay and banking phishing emails fast enough. I do legitimate eBay sales and the phishers get more sophisticated every day -- well, at least their formatting has gotten better.
The Washington Post is slashdotted, so I can't read the article, but I doubt this is just a "drop in the bucket". A group of 18 is likely to have more than a single phishing website. More than likely they'd have over 100. That's still just 1% of the sites out there, but it's at least something. Also, if there were other people in this phishing group, those people would be stongly deterred from phishing in the future. It also serves as a preventative against additional people getting into phishing. At least something is being done about these crimes.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
I read nothing about Romania. The article talks about US and Polish citizens. Maybe anonymous submitters should be scrutinized a tad more by the editors.
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One from The Register: http://www.theregister.com/2006/11/03/operation_ca rdkeeper_phishing_arrests/
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And the Wired article sited by The Register:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72064-0.ht
They haven't committed any crime in their own country, for starters. They may not have committed any crime in the USA, either. I am completely unaware of any laws against tricking someone into giving out their banking information.
The Internet is pretty much a consequences-free zone. You can do anything you like there, such as stealing or what would be considered a hate crime in the offline world and never get prosecuted for it. You can see examples of this every day. And just about every "Internet prosecution" you do see is very selectively done or someone stepped way, way over the line.
Phishing and the public awarenesss of it is one way to keep people away from the Internet if they don't believe they can tell the difference between the real Ebay and the fake one.
Who comes up with operation names? And why? Might be a bit offtopic, but seriously. Cardkeeper? What about operation Gone Phishing?
0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
beats a good day phishing. At least if you're these guys.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
To remind us what a drop in the bucket such international operations are, the article says: "The Anti-Phishing Working Group, an industry consortium, said more than 10,000 phishing Web sites were active on the Internet in August, about double the number of sites in January."
..... one web site per person.
Yes, and of course, dont forget the webstandard
If we can count them, why can't we shut them down?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Here in Virginia, you can get a phishing license for like $10 at tons of different places...no need to steal identities to get them, they hand them out to just about anyone. I don't know what these guys were thinking...
oh, oh, I have an idea:
A client is made accessible to the wider public. The client autoupdates from a central database with details of known phising sites. The download contains a set of randomised data (URL, list of form fields, random credit card number that follows the validation rules) that is used by the client to submit a false set. Unlike spam address collectors where false emails have very little impact, a high number of invalid credit card purchases would hopefully make all sorts of alarm bells ring. It could potentially be fully secure and automated, aka SETI@home. More like antiphising@home.
Workable?
In the phishing scenario, the user has to authenticate the server. That is the crux of the problem. The user base is vast and their technical expertise varies significantly. There is an urgent need to let the users spot phishing attacks easily and reliably. All the banks and financial institutions know it is a looming problem, still they dont do anything. Finally some lawyer sues some bank and suddently the pendulam will swing all the way to the other end and the banks will make us ALL jump through hoops of fire just to log in.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The article cited mentions cyber criminals in the U.S.A. and Poland, not Romania.
Everybody seems to be missing a pretty crucial point here:
:)
If I'm a bank, and I am based in the US (say: CitiBank, or Wells Fargo, both of whom have been victims of numerous phishing attacks) and if I am the victim of an international gang who phishes my customers: guess who I have to go to to investigate? Usually the FBI and / or the SEC. If the criminals behind the phishing attack are found to be in a country other than the US, *usually* INTERPOL gets involved so they can then point me (or the FBI / SEC) to the appropriate foreign law enforcement groups.
If the company was based in the UK, the process would be exactly the same: Scotland Yard + INTERPOL + foreign law enforcement = arrest someone in Poland, usually with links to Romania / Russia / Ukraine.
This should be shocking to precisely nobody. What are we supposed to do: ignore it? "Oh well they're all the way over in Poland, now we'll NEVER find out who did it."
Don't be so hair-trigger about what is and is not appropriate. If you're getting defrauded, there are tons of international avenues available for the investigation of this crime.
Please note that when the issue is the creation or sales of weapons of mass destruction, all of the above seems to go right out the window (history has at least two examples now.)
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Where's Romania in this article? I can't seem to find any reference to it...
There is no mention of Romania in the article.
Yeah, I know this is redundant, but you shouldn't tarnish Romania's reputation. It's bad enough that we have to use only European online banking sites for legitimate money transfers, cause the Americans have us classified as "card-stealing plague". I know we've had to deal with our share of malicious people, but we're pretty much out of the Middle Ages now, you know... It's really annoying when you try to buy/sell stuff through E-bay and you want to sign up for a Paypal account, only to notice that your country is "misteriously" missing from the drop-down list. Save for Moneybookers and a couple of other European sites maybe, the rest of the internet banking world has us blacklisted, and that's just wrong.