Web Fraud 2.0 — Point-and-Click Cracking Tools

An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post's Security Fix blog is running a fascinating series that peers inside some of the Web-based services cyber crooks are using to ply their trade: from masking their identity, to defeating CAPTCHAs, to creating counterfeit documents and validating stolen credit and debit cards. Everyone familiar with this space hears about these kinds of tools and services all the time in the abstract, but the Post blog includes screen shots and background details on the popularity of the services and how each one is helping to bring cyber crime that much closer to the realm of even the most newbie scam artists." Many of these tools require a working knowledge of Russian. Wouldn't surprise me to learn that Chinese-language tools exist too.

Comments

Language Support

[introspekt.i]

Many of these tools require a working knowledge of Russian. Wouldn't surprise me to learn that Chinese-language tools exist too.

Damn. And here I was looking for fraud tools in Klingon. No wonder I can't ever find anything.

Re:Holy Stereotypes!

[Jack9]

Except it isn't a stereotype...it's a statistical certainty. Wouldn't surprise me to learn that English-language tools exist too?
See how stereotype doesn't apply? Probably not.

stereotype day

[jacquesm]

Is today global stereotype day and did I miss the memo ?

Hitting on the Russians seems to be in real fashion these days, you'd almost think there was a political motive behind it. Is France out of fashion or so ?

Really, the reason these tools exist is because there are several requirements before you can deploy these tools, which are:

- access to international banking
- a large base of hackers, preferably unemployed
(I use 'hacker' in its original form)
- organized crime

The USA, China, Germany and Russia all have these in abundance so that's where you will find your toolkits.

Re:stereotype day

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

You forget the main reason the tools and the crime exists in Russia:
- a weak, corrupt legal system.

Russians (and quite a few people in the other states of the ex-USSR) have a weird sense of entitlement that causes them to believe that it's perfectly acceptable to steal from the rich. They suffered under communism for so long that it's quite all right to get some payback by stealing from the West now.

Since Russian law really doesn't care about crimes that are committed outside of Russia against non-Russians and anyway you can just bribe a judge to get whatever ruling you want, there really is no stopping these people. Well, I can think of ways to stop them, but let's just say that I don't think the USA or the EU has the stomach for what it would take. The weak legal system argument probably applies to China too.

This shouldn't be terribly surprising

[Enlarged to Show Tex]

All this really means is that script kiddies can now do identity theft as easily as they can perform DDoS attacks...

Re:Holy Stereotypes!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/spammers.lasso

  1 HerbalKing India
  2 Vincent Chan / yoric.net Hong Kong
  3 Alex Blood / Alexander Mosh / AlekseyB / Alex Polyakov Ukraine
  4 Nikhil Kumar Pragji / Dark-Mailer Australia
Queensland
  5 Ruslan Ibragimov / send-safe.com Russian Federation
  6 Leo Kuvayev / BadCow Russian Federation
  7 Pavka / Artofit Russian Federation
  8 Russian Business Network Russian Federation
  9 Yambo Financials Ukraine
10 Alexey Panov - ckync.com Russia

Made in USA versions sold by Google

[Animats]

If you want made-in-USA tools for this, try searching Google for "craigslist auto posting tool". Google offers seven paid ads for spamming tools and crackers. ("The worlds Best Selling Craigslist software. Works with new CAPTCHA!") Three of them (including one that advertises "Only Automated Solution for the new captcha. Nobody else is automated.") are available through Google Checkout.

This has been going on for months, despite press coverage. I'm beginning to wonder if Google is deliberately promoting tools to kill Craigslist.

Re:Holy Stereotypes!

[Anonymous Coward]

The stereotype doesn't imply that the statement is wrong, but why was that statement made about Chinese and not English tools? According to the Spam origin data, English tools are a lot more likely then Chinese tools, so while in itself not wrong the decision to focus on one correct statement while omitting another correct statement speaks of bias and creates an incorrect impression to the casual reader (and if you know the data then you don't need news articles in the first place).

Re:Holy Stereotypes!

[hclewk]

It is not a stereotype to say that many burglaries are committed by blacks, as this can easily be backed by data. It is stereotypical, however, to say, "All blacks commit burglaries", "Most blacks commit burglaries", or "He is black so he's probably committed burglary."

Re:Typical Slashdotzz comment!

[gujo-odori]

Your comment just proves how clueless you are about the spam situation in China.

China is, and has been for several years, a bastion of "bulletproof" hosting. Since you're so clueless about spam, I probably have to explain bulletproof hosting. Bulletproof hosting is a contract with a hosting provider and/or ISP with IP space to burn that doesn't care what you do with that hosting/IP space so long as you pay your bills.

China is also a haven of phishing sites, largely for the same reason and courtesy of a few rogue registrars operating in China.

There's nothing racist about criticizing China for its conduct. What next? You'll be telling us it's racist to criticize Nigeria for being the source of most of the world's 419 spam?

Silly me. I hadn't heard that scammers, spammers, and those who give them shelter constituted a race.