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21 Million German Bank Accounts For Sale

Posted by kdawson on from the black-marks dept.

anerva writes "Black market criminals are offering to sell details on 21 million German bank accounts for €12M ($15.3M), according to an investigative report (German; Google translation) published Saturday. In November reporters for WirtschaftsWoche (Economic Week) had a face-to-face meeting with criminals in a Hamburg hotel, according to the magazine. Posing as buyers working for a gambling business, the journalists were able to strike a price of €0.55 per record, or €12M for all the data. They were given a CD containing the 1.2 million accounts when they asked for assurances that the information they would be buying was legitimate." 21 million is three in four existing German bank accounts.

16 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. How to pay... by LingNoi · · Score: 5, Funny

    Couldn't you just buy one to begin with and then use that German bank account to buy the rest?

    1. Re:How to pay... by Ihmhi · · Score: 5, Funny

      And then we can beat the crap out of the office printer and dance to rap music!

      --
      Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
  2. On your marks (no pun intended) by pin0chet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In theory, if the banking system were known to be compromised in such a huge way, and there were no way of knowing if your own bank account was compromised or not, shouldn't there be a massive bank run? Because everyone wants to withdraw their money right away to minimize the chance that this ridiculous security leak negatively affects them, right? Such a massive erosion of confidence can completely destroy a banking system.

    1. Re:On your marks (no pun intended) by John+Hasler · · Score: 5, Funny

      > In theory, if the banking system were known to be compromised in such a huge way, and
      > there were no way of knowing if your own bank account was compromised or not, shouldn't
      > there be a massive bank run?

      This is Germany. There will be no bank run until it is properly planned, organized, and regulated.

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
  3. Gotta love the germans by sleeponthemic · · Score: 5, Funny

    Even their criminality is impressively efficient :-)

    --
    I record my sleeptalking
  4. Re:So what by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yah, ho hum. I mean, I bought my first 21 million German bank accounts YEARS AGO. Nothing to see here folks.

  5. Tomorrow's News by Bentov · · Score: 5, Funny

    This morning the entire banking system in Germany collapsed due to 3 in 4 Germans transferring money out of the country to banks in neighboring countries....

  6. Re:So what by henni16 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Who wants a mass list anyway, you can't target spam at people just because they're German and they have a bank account, and stealing that many identities begs the question, "why?"

    Yeah, who could have use for the equivalent of 21 million valid direct debit cards.

  7. Exactly by tomhudson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But an account number is not the equivalent of a direct debit card. It's not that easy to withdraw money from an account when all you have is the account number.

    Every time you write a check, you're giving the recipient your bank address, bank account number ... AND a specimen of your signature. OMG! Quick - millions of people compromised their bank accounts today!

    1. Re:Exactly by Corporate+Troll · · Score: 5, Informative

      No, he means exactly that. Wire transfers cost nothing in Europe (at least not in my country) and international wire transfers only require you to use an IBAN account number (which are already standard in some countries) and the SWIFT/BIC code. All this information is typically provided on every bill you get.

      National transfers, you only need the account number that you with to wire money to. In most countries, the "bank code" is part of the account number. It most certainly is encoded in the IBAN. (Can you tell, that I implemented the IBAN code for a major bank?) IBAN is a wonderful system: a bit reading material

    2. Re:Exactly by dropadrop · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wire transfer does not cost anything in Europe. I have a close friend from the US living here, and can't stop wondering at how the way your banks work are so 1980...

    3. Re:Exactly by RMH101 · · Score: 5, Informative
      Conjecture: you have information on 21M bank accounts. Presumably this includes account number, sort code and possibly other more sensitive information such as date of birth.
      You then arrange the stealing/pickpocketing of cards. More likely, you request freshly stolen cards from a specialist. Some of those cards are going to marry up with the information you already hold, and may be enough to leverage funds.
      Don't believe criminals are this organised? An example from personal experience. Turns out a machine at my other half's work was compromomised with a keystroke/screenshot recorder infection. First we haerd of it was when all our accounts were cleared out - someone had been organised enough to patiently continue recording "please enter X and Y character of your password" long enough to piece together the full password. They'd then used this on a saturday before a bank holiday to transfer all of our funds into another account at the same bank - this clears instantly and has less restrictions. They had then coordinated with someone in the UK who could provide them with a stolen debit card issued by the same bank, transferred our money into that account, and got a stooge to go into the bank just before it shut on saturday and take all that money out in cash - within hours of initial transfer.

      End result? We were cleaned out, some innocent who had their card nicked had their bank account abused, and the criminals got our money in cash, untraceably. 6-8 weeks later, we were refunded but it was a long and unpleasant experience that taught me several things:
      1) Don't assume your bank has a coherent identity theft/fraud department. Expect to get bounced around outsourced call centers that don't communicate with each other or the police. Don't expect them to be interested in IP logs or anything else you think might help them catch the hackers, either
      2) "Organised crime" isn't just a phrase. They're quite advanced now, even outsourcing the donkeywork on the ground to other organisations
      3) Two-factor authentication is a Good Thing with online banking
      4) Don't do online banking on someone elses' computer

  8. I did it last week by ZiggyM · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I live in Lima Peru. Last week a teller at my bank made me wait 10 minutes while she waited for the safe to open to give me some cash. In the meantime I went to a computer terminal without a keyboard, and access to only a webpage with the bank rates (windows, no start menu, no access to desktop etc). The machine was supposedly locked so that you couldnt navigate away or do anything except scroll the page and click a few links. Well, they forgot do disable right-click. 7 steps later I was able to access their internal network, and had access to a lot of internal information on individual machines. I went to the branch manager and showed him. He was surprised and embarassed, and took note of the steps I took. It was amazing how easy was to do it. The 7 steps were clever, but not impossible.

  9. Hmm... by sootman · · Score: 5, Funny

    21 million is three in four existing German bank accounts.

    I have for sale EVERY VISA NUMBER EVER ISSUED! From 4000 0000 0000 0000 to 4999 9999 9999 9999! (Note: some numbers may not be valid.)

    I will sell them for US $1,000,000 MILLIONS US DOLLARS. Contact me via this website.

    Act now and I'll throw in every Master Card ever issued. (5000 0000 0000 0000 to 5999 9999 9999 9999) (Same disclaimer as above.) And no identity thief would be complete without a REAL SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER to go with it, eh? Guess what? That's right--I'VE GOT THEM ALL TOO! (001-01-0001 to 999-99-9999)

    --
    Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
  10. Re:21 million is 3/4 of accounts? by quarrel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I had the same reaction re the number of accounts. It is small.

    However, Germany isn't all that small.

    So some back of the envelope calcs:

    They claim 21/.75 = 28M bank accounts in Germany

    It's got roughly 80M people. Assume something like 2.2 people per househould (dunno what it is in Germany), and you get 36M. You gotta figure each household has at least one. I don't know how things really work in Germany, but I assume they're like the rest of the developed world and you essentially can't function without a bank account.

    Then there are businesses. Even very small businesses will run several accounts.

    I think the 28M bank accounts is just bullshit. It's gotta be heaps higher.

    Surely 100M wouldn't be that big a figure even?

    --Q

  11. Re:Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, they're referring to this raid on Crytek with the riot police:

    http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=31767