Rabid Wombat wrote:
On Mon, 1 Sep 1997, Anonymous wrote:
"Smak" delivered an encrypted CD containing over 100,000 stolen credit card numbers. After the validity of the credit card information was confirmed through decryption of the data on the CD, "Smak" was taken into custody by the FBI.
And the 100,000 people were immediately notified that their credit cards had been compromised? I fucking doubt it. Better to screw over 100,000 citizen-units than expose the incompetence of a few companies and the government's fight against strong encryption and computer security.
I was recently notified by a bank that issued one of my credit cards that my card number had been sold, along with thousands of other account numbers, to an undercover FBI agent. The bank canceled my account, opened a new one, and overnighted a replacement card. No big deal, and no loss to me.
OTOH, it *might* have been in response to a different incident. Keep those paranoid rants coming.
Why don't you tell us the name of the company that has such lousy computer security that your credit was placed in jepoardy, so that we can decide if we want to avoid doing business with them? RantMonger
On Mon, 1 Sep 1997, bureau42 Anonymous Remailer wrote:
Rabid Wombat wrote:
On Mon, 1 Sep 1997, Anonymous wrote:
"Smak" delivered an encrypted CD containing over 100,000 stolen credit card numbers. After the validity of the credit card information was confirmed through decryption of the data on the CD, "Smak" was taken into custody by the FBI.
And the 100,000 people were immediately notified that their credit cards had been compromised? I fucking doubt it. Better to screw over 100,000 citizen-units than expose the incompetence of a few companies and the government's fight against strong encryption and computer security.
I was recently notified by a bank that issued one of my credit cards that my card number had been sold, along with thousands of other account numbers, to an undercover FBI agent. The bank canceled my account, opened a new one, and overnighted a replacement card. No big deal, and no loss to me.
OTOH, it *might* have been in response to a different incident. Keep those paranoid rants coming.
Why don't you tell us the name of the company that has such lousy computer security that your credit was placed in jepoardy, so that we can decide if we want to avoid doing business with them?
Based on what I've seen so far, the account numbers were more likely to have been obtained from the databases of merchants than from banks. If the bank was cracked, there would have been many more card numbers from one bank on the CD, rather than a distribution of account numbers issued by many institutions. I doubt that someone managed to crack a dozens of banks, and then took only a few thousand numbers from each. It is more likely that "widgets R us" was compromised, resulting in a few thousand accounts from each of the major banks. I suppose I could look back over a few year's worth of statements, and tell you where *not* to shop, but I'd be listing all merchants I'd done business with as being equally guilty, when it is very likely that only one was compromised. My guess is that Smak had inside access to a particular merchant's system, but I've been wrong before. -r.w.
Rabid Wombat <wombat@mcfeely.bsfs.org> writes:
Based on what I've seen so far, the account numbers were more likely to have been obtained from the databases of merchants than from banks. If the bank was cracked, there would have been many more card numbers from one bank on the CD, rather than a distribution of account numbers issued by many institutions. I doubt that someone managed to crack a dozens of banks, and then took only a few thousand numbers from each. It is more likely that "widgets R us" was compromised, resulting in a few thousand accounts from each of the major banks.
A couple of years ago "hackers" got hold of the credit card numbers being billed by panix.com, a (lousy) NYC ISP. of course that was much less3 than a hundred thousand cards :-) --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps
Arnaud DeBorchgrave had an editorial as the final word saying that there should be laws against cypherlaundering in the 8/25 insight (the one with the article on squalene being found in the gulf-war veterans). In the current (9/1) issue, apparently someone at commerce left with a few boxes with classified material including some documents saying which commercial encryption products the NSA could or could not break. --- reply to tzeruch - at - ceddec - dot - com ---
"Smak" delivered an encrypted CD containing over 100,000 stolen credit card numbers. After the validity of the credit card information was confirmed through decryption of the data on the CD, "Smak" was taken into custody by the FBI.
And the 100,000 people were immediately notified that their credit cards had been compromised? I fucking doubt it. Better to screw over 100,000 citizen-units than expose the incompetence of a few companies and the government's fight against strong encryption and computer security.
I was recently notified by a bank that issued one of my credit cards that my card number had been sold, along with thousands of other account numbers, to an undercover FBI agent. The bank canceled my account, opened a new one, and overnighted a replacement card. No big deal, and no loss to me.
OTOH, it *might* have been in response to a different incident. Keep those paranoid rants coming.
Why don't you tell us the name of the company that has such lousy computer security that your credit was placed in jepoardy, so that we can decide if we want to avoid doing business with them?
Waitaminute. If your credit card number is stolen and misused, and you follow the procedures, your credit is not affected. The financial institutions eat the losses from fraud (humongous), then pass them on cardholders and merchants. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps
participants (4)
-
bureau42 Anonymous Remailer -
dlv＠bwalk.dm.com -
nospam-seesignature＠ceddec.com -
Rabid Wombat