178 Arrested In US/EU Credit Card Cloning Ops

eldavojohn writes with this report from Brian Krebs: "Authorities have moved in on 178 people accused of working in credit card cloning labs across the USA and Europe, but with the bulk of the work apparently operating out of Spain. The source states that 'Police in 14 countries participated in a two-year investigation, initiated in Spain, where police have discovered 120,000 stolen credit card numbers and 5,000 cloned cards, and arrested 76 people and dismantled six cloning labs. The raids were made primarily in Romania, France, Italy, Germany, Ireland, and the United States, with arrests also made in Australia, Sweden, Greece, Finland, and Hungary. The detainees are also suspected of armed robbery, blackmail, sexual exploitation, and money-laundering, the police said.' Krebs notes a new credit card debuting at Turkish banks that appears to have a built-in LCD that has a random six-digit number associated with each transaction much like RSA SecurID keys used for computer logins."

Comments

Doesnt sound very profitable.

[Rivalz]

Close to 200 employees spanning multiple countries. And they take in only 25mil? Not just that but getting cash out of credit card companies I thought was a pain in the ass. Is it 25 mil per year or total? Because if it is total that seems like a shitty business investment. They should just stick to guns, drugs, and prostitution.

Re:Doesnt sound very profitable.

[mujadaddy]

They should just stick to guns, drugs, and prostitution.

Intrigued, newsletter, etc., etc.

Re:Doesnt sound very profitable.

[Hatta]

Most of these people aren't doing it because it's lucrative. They do it because they have no legitimate options. The lowest rungs of any criminal enterprise gets paid shit wages just like any business. 200 people at 20k a year is 4 million for payroll. That leaves over 20 million for the boss.

Re:Doesnt sound very profitable.

[sznupi]

For many people in those ops 20k a year might be actually a quite decent level of income; compared to, say, the average at the place they are or from which they are.

Re:Random?

[Speare]

SecurID is pretty much the exact opposite of a random number.

Er, a reasonable working definition of "random" is "you can't predict it." The card changes its displayed number every N seconds. The card's pseudo-random number generator has an algorithm and a seed value which are generally unknown to the user, and unknown to the merchant. It was produced in sync with the server, and continues to compute the numbers in parallel with the server. Even if the thief knows the algorithm, they would require significant time (an understatement) to acquire enough samples to accurately predict the next number that the server is expecting. So, for all practical purposes, yes, it's random.

Re:Spain, Really?

[blair1q]

Actually, innovating with new forms of income is why nations are going broke these days.

They're pretending that speculation is investment, borrowing is income, and money-multiplication through circular lending is economic growth.

And hidden among these obvious insanities is a much more subtle one that will snap the rubber band: they track money borrowed to speculate as risk at the interest rate of the loan, not at the rate-of-ruin of the speculation.

The United States was as usual the most innovative, and therefore led the world. To a precipice and beyond. As usual by setting a good example.