Personal information is very easy to steal.Names, addresses, dates of birth, credit card numbers, social securitynumbers - they’re all easy to find using the Internet. Once thatinformation is in the hands of criminals, it’s very easy for them touse. They can wipe out your bank account, run up your credit cards, andsteal your identity.
How easy is it to steal personal information? A recent studyconducted to test the security of wireless perimeters of stores inmajor malls across the globe revealed that 25% of the stores werecompletely insecure and 85% would have been easy to crack. Even thoughthe attackers in the TJX breachused insecurities in the wireless networks to obtain millions ofpersonal data and that this breach has cost TJX millions of dollars...
There’s been a lot of coverage on the FBI Bot Roast II campaignwhere they released information about eight suspects who have beenindicted for conducting criminal botnet activity. Bot herder suspectsfrom across the United States have been linked to criminal activitiessuch as DDoS attacks, conducting multi-million dollar phishing andspamming scams, and in particular stealing personal information thatcould lead to identity theft.
Thousands of pieces of personal information are sold and traded inunderground economy servers found in Internet relay chat (IRC) rooms.When I look around the servers that we monitor, it reminds me ofCauseway Bay at night in Hong Kong. Large advertisements bombard youwith capital letters and carders repeat their sales pitches acrossmultiple lines to attract people to their bargains. They list off theirbest deals and even offer cheaper prices if...
