Spammers Love to Hurt Internet Users

Love is a many splendored social engineering tool and spammers are busy sending out a whole lot of their particular brand of love across the electronic universe.

An interesting blog post (Love Hurts) by Kevin Haley at Symantec points out that malicious code writers are busy spreading their work in attachments hidden in the millions of spam messages being spewed out by zombies (compromised computers). If you click on one of these attachments — and your machine isn't bulletproof — it also can become a zombie and used as part of a botnet to send out more spam. Botnets are groups of compromised computers used to form a super computer. Of course, downloading malware can also mean that all your personal and financial information will be stolen, too. Please note (as you will see below) that some forms of malware currently being sent out can do both.

Kevin's blog post came out at almost the same time Symantec issued it's monthly Spam Landscape Report. With Valentine's Day coming up, love is a predictable lure and it's probably a good idea to make sure you know who loves you before clicking on any links in an e-mail.

Another predictable finding in the report is that spam levels are continuing to rise to normal levels after they fell when McColo was shut-down. McColo (a Web service hosting provider) was shut down in November after it was discovered they were the source of a large number of botnets, which are used to send out spam. Last month, 79 percent of all e-mail was spam. The report also notes that the point of origin for spam is shifting a little. Although the United States is still number one, the number of active zombies in other countries is rising. While some of this is being attributed to McColo, the report points out that this might point to the fact that some of these countries have an increasing number of users accessing the Internet.

From a spam-commerce point of view, the report indicates weight loss products, counterfeit drugs, cheap watches and porn top the list of items available at super-cheap prices as Valentine's Day approaches.

Besides Valentine's Day, President Obama also continues to be used as a spam lure, according to the report. A lot of this spam contains malware with files names such as usa.exe, obamanew.exe, statement.exe, barackblog.exe and barackspeech.exe. The malware being spread in these spam e-mails is called the W32.Waledac, which is capable of both stealing sensitive personal and financial information and turning a machine into a zombie. It also establishes a backdoor to a machine so it can be remotely accessed.

Current events (and holidays) have been and probably will continue to be used as social engineering lures to snare the unwary.

Also noted was a rise in Russian spam hawking goods and services. With cheap long distance services using VoIP, the Russians have actually set up telephone numbers for their intended victims to call. My guess is that they will entice someone to send money, which can't be recovered when the person sending it discovers they've been scammed.

Chinese gambling spam is also mentioned as a new phenomenon in the report. It appears to be patterned after English language gambling spam, but is written in Chinese.

Last, but not least, Nigerian spam is mentioned. Nigerian or 419 spam is named after the section of the Nigerian penal code dealing with fraud. It normally is a come-on for lost riches or winning a lottery and has a lot of spelling and grammatical errors. Typically known as advance fee fraud, the victim is enticed in sending money across a border (wire transfer is preferred) to secure their fortune. Of course in the end, the victim never receives anything and is often left in financial ruin.

There are many twists to advance fee and one of them is to send a bogus financial instrument to a person with instructions to cash it. If the person doesn't get arrested for presenting it, they are instructed to send the money back to the scammer. Of course, the cashing institution eventually figures out the instrument is bogus and the victim is held liable for it.

A lot of people think that advance fee all comes from Nigeria, which isn't true. I've personally traced it to a lot of other places and called some of the telephone numbers. The person answering didn't sound Nigerian and I've spoken to a few people from Nigeria in my time. Naturally, this doesn't mean that scam activity is not coming from Nigeria and just that not all of it does.

Pam Dixon, of the World Privacy Forum, went on record recently that the spelling and grammatical errors aren't being seen as much in advance fee lures anymore. Obviously, advance fee scammers, wherever they hail from, are being more careful and have discovered spell check?

To close, the Anti-Phishing Working Group's recent report on phishing, which is delivered via spam, has noted that the number of crimeware-spreading URLs out there has increased 258 percent versus the same time period last year. It also noted a record high in the amount of hijacked and victimized brand names. Last but not least, it noted another record in the amount of malicious application variants being seen in the wild (on the Internet).

This would suggest that spam is getting more dangerous and the people sending it are becoming more sophisticated. The smartest thing to do with all spam is to delete it. Making sure your computer's security is updated with a known and reliable vendor is also a smart thing to do. After all, as I've speculated many times before, most fraud, phishing and financial misdeeds on the Internet start with spam.

The $9 Million Electronic Robbery at RBS WorldPay

With the Heartland Data Breach still fresh in the news, word of a $9 million heist using data from another payment card processor (RBS WorldPay) has hit the air waves. RBS WorldPay reported in December that their payroll card system was hacked and 1.5 million financial and 1.1 million personal records were compromised. Payroll cards are used by employers to pay their employees by loading their pay onto a debit card.

A Fox News investigation has now revealed that on November 8th, a coordinated attack netted $9 million using cloned cards in 49 cities, worldwide. The attack occurred all over the United States, Montreal, Moscow, and Hong Kong in about 30 minutes.

Another scary aspect to this attack was that the hacker was able to remove the daily withdrawal limits of the cloned cards. According to the Washington Post, 100 cards were used and fake deposits were used to refuel the balance on the cards. Large withdrawals were then made again and again on the cloned cards. Please note this represents that a very small percentage of the total cards compromised were used in scheme. No information was available on how they refueled the accounts.

I've seen accounts refueled using bogus checks, however in this instance, I would suspect it occurred in a more electronic manner. This leads me to believe we will see more disclosures regarding this case as time goes on.

According to official reports, there are no primary suspects in the case. Photographs of some of "lower level soldiers" used to withdraw the money have been released in the hope that (if caught) they will provide information on the people, who provided them with the cloned cards. Unfortunately, with the anonymous nature of the Internet, coupled with the fact that chat-rooms are often used to facilitate the distribution of stolen data, the lower level soldiers might not know the identities of the main players, themselves.



In the recent Heartland breach, it was disclosed that they met PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards). According to Visa's list of PCI DSS certified vendors, "RBS Lynk" (Royal Bank of Scotland) is certified. PCI DSS standards are the payment card industry's solution to protecting their data from being misused.

I also discovered that RBS World Pay and TrustWave put out a press release in 2007 announcing they were providing level 3 and level 4 merchants with a specialized data security service to identify their risks and vulnerabilities. The idea behind this service is to help these merchants become PCI DSS compliant.

Interestingly enough, TrustWave also certified Heartland in 2008, according to the article I read in Dark Reading.

PCI DSS has been criticized as being expensive for merchants and now we are seeing it compromised, too. The sad thing is that despite a lot of money being shelled out to become PCI DSS compliant, the people shelling it out seem to be just as vulnerable as they were before. In fact, someone might conclude that PCI DSS is giving everyone a faux sense of security (opinion).

As usual, in these cases, a class action law suit has been filed against RBS WorldPay. WorldPay has also announced the cardholders will not be held liable for the charges, according to the page on their site about this matter.

Thus far, according to all the sources I read, no identity theft has occurred. My guess is that because the 1.1 million people compromised are monitoring their credit, none will occur in the short-term. In most of the many breaches I've read about, very little of the information was used after the breach was disclosed. If you think about it, this makes sense because measures have been taken to make the information useless to criminals.

To close, I would like to add another thought. The fact that payroll information — which included personal information — was hacked might point to another example of how storing too much personal information in too many places is the root cause of the problem.

There has been a push to put everything from payroll to government benefits on payment cards. When this occurs, personal information as well as the financial data used to produce the debit card accounts is stored to process the transactions. Since employers (and the government) use vendors (card issuers) to accomplish this task, this means we have sensitive information being transferred to third parties. It wouldn't surprise me if these third parties transfer the information somewhere else when they outsource it, all over again.

Perhaps, what is needed is a common sense solution to the problem. As long as we keep sending information all over the place, it creates too many points where it can be compromised. The bottom line to all this is we appear to be making it too easy for criminals to take advantage of the situation.

The costs are getting out of control, too. Although I've never seen any information on how much of this is going on, the Washington Post quoted a source from the security industry (Ori Eisen, 41st Parameter) as stating $50 million was lost in one month in New York City alone last year.

I wonder if any of our bail-out (taxpayer) money is being used to cover these losses. Although, I can't say for sure, the people it was given to can't seem to say where it has gone, either. Granted, it might be a long shot, but the money had to be given to cover losses caused by people who were a little too greedy in the first place. We need to wake up and realize that there is no free lunch and the costs of all these types of scenarios are passed to all of us when history is written.

There is no such thing as zero fraud liability!

Increase in Scams Attributed to Economy

I just finished reading an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal by M. P. McQueen, which suggests that the bear market is creating a bull market for fraudsters. According to the numerous experts cited in the article, the reason for this is economic gloom and doom with a healthy dose of anxiety.

This shouldn't be surprising because gloom, doom, and anxiety make effective social engineering tools that can be used to part people and businesses from their money.

The article references phishing expeditions that lead to fake Web sites — which often spoof a financial institution or government entity — and entice people into giving up enough of their personal details to drain their financial resources. It also mentions that some of these sites leave behind malicious software on a person's machine, which steal all these details automatically.
Also mentioned is the use of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), caller-ID spoofing and cell phone technology to mount texting and vishing attacks. Vishing is merely another method of tricking people to give up personal and financial information via the telephone. In these attacks, the caller ID is spoofed to make it appear as if it is coming from a legitimate institution.

Apparently telephone technology is being used to commit other types of crimes, too. Many of our 911 centers cannot identify spoofed calls coming from computers using VoIP technology. This has led to S.W.A.T. teams being tricked into deploying in full battle gear to residential neighborhoods when no emergency existed. Of course, businesses use the same technology to trick people who have caller ID into picking up their telephones. You can even buy a card to do this at will from any telephone right over the Web.

It sometimes amazes me how much irresponsible technology there is out there, which is being sold legally. There are even Web sites, with disclaimers, that specialize in making this technology available to the general public. Of course, there are also complete DIY (do-it-yourself) phishing kits being sold over the Internet. Some of these even come with tech support. The phishing kits are illegal, but can be found for sale in chat rooms if you know where to look for them. Sadly, the truth is that these chat rooms aren't very hard to find. The fine line between legitimate enterprise and scams is often a little blurry.

The WSJ article quotes a lot of experts, including Gartner, the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, who all seem to agree that scams are on the rise. An interesting phenomenon called out were small fraud charges being found on accounts. I guess taking small amounts, which might be mistaken for bank fees, is a good way to stay under the radar. A lot of people don't realize how many small fees are being charged to their account and it can be quite confusing at times. I guess the crooks are trying to make themselves look like bankers (speculation) and it's probably a good time for all of us to review our statements, carefully.

Speaking of fees, which are used as revenue streams by a lot of businesses, the WSJ put out another article this entitled, "In the Fight Against Bill Creep, Every Extra Fee Is the Enemy." Besides being on the look out for cyber scammers, this article points out other reasons it is smart to review our financial statements with a keen eye these days.

Another notable trend in the past 12 months is executives being targeted. In this trend, specific people within organizations are being targeted and tricked into downloading malicious software on machines. In one of these scams last April, the targets were led to believe they were being subpoenaed to testify in federal court.

Last, but not least, the article points out that job scams are on the rise. It's a well established fact that job sites from Monster to Craigslist have scammers operating on them to recruit people to launder money, cash bogus financial instruments or give up all their personal and financial information. Adding fuel to this fire, it was disclosed recently that Monster.com had been hacked.

Capping off this interesting article — which is a pretty good recap of recent scam activity — is Pam Dixon of the World Privacy Forum pointing out that scammers have learned how to use "spell check." In the past, one of the best ways to identify a scam was it's lack of proper spelling and grammar. While the scammers might have have learned to use spell check, it might also point out that there are more and more people out of work (with better grammar skills), who are becoming scammers.

The WSJ quoted a lot of experts that agree with them that scam activity is on the rise. Another interesting read supporting this (not mentioned in their article) is the recent report that was commissioned by McAfee. This report points to all the unsecured data out there that is fueling the rise in cyber crime. They estimate, at this point, that the financial implications have reached $1 trillion. They also have some interesting information about social engineering and how it is being currently used to commit scams in the current economic environment in another set of articles on their main site.

In my opinion, it makes sense that scams of all kinds are on the rise. There is a lot of confusion going on and people are getting desperate. It might be desperation that is causing more people to get involved in scams on both sides of the fence. For the majority of us, who just want to ride these times out and survive the mayhem, the best thing to probably do is be extra diligent in our financial matters and use a little good old fashioned common sense.

Having dealt with a few scammers in my life, I've found that most of them aren't the most intelligent people around. The best thing to do is to think carefully before jumping in anything of a financial nature these days.

Will Heartland Become the Largest Data Breach in History?

According to a press release from Heartland Systems, a payment card processor, their data has been being compromised since sometime last year. On the site, Heartland set up to cover the incident, it says they promptly notified the Secret Service and hired two teams of forensic computer investigators to look into the case after they discovered their systems had been compromised.

Heartland was initially notified by Visa/Mastercard of suspicious activity, which led to malicious software being discovered in their system. The malware in question was harvesting and (obviously) transmitting data. In the press release, they state they believe the breach has been contained. Heartland claims no merchant data, social security numbers or unencrypted PINs were compromised. They were also quick to add that their check management systems, Canadian payroll, campus solutions, micropayments operations and recently acquired Network Services and Chockstone processing platforms had not been compromised, either.

It should be noted that in previous breaches, additional items were later discovered to have been compromised as the investigation progressed.

Brian Krebs at the Washington Post interviewed Robert Baldwin, Heartland's president and chief financial officer, who stated they don't know how many transactions were compromised. In the interview, Baldwin pointed out that since the card numbers compromised didn't have address information; it would be hard for fraudsters to use them in card-not-present (e-commmerce) transactions. Most e-commerce platforms validate the address tied to the card as a security measure. I thought about this for a second and remembered that Visa/Mastercard had warned Heartland about suspicious transactions. If there were suspicious transactions, I would deduct someone is using this data to commit fraud. Besides that, I doubt anyone sophisticated enough to pull this off would go to all this trouble (and potential legal exposure) if they couldn't use the information to make money. This is another thing that might suggest additional information will be discovered as the investigation progresses.

In the interview, Baldwin declined to name any of their customers, who were compromised. Heartland processes payments for about 250,000 customers and processes about 100 million transactions per month. He also said they will not be offering identity theft protection since not enough information was stolen to commit identity theft.

On the Truston blog, Tom Fragala, aptly pointed out that this equates to four billion transactions a year. Many are speculating that this will turn out to be the largest known data breach in history. Tom's company, which offers a privacy-friendly identity theft prevention and recovery service, offers a 45 day free-trial of their services. Even after the 45 days, the prevention part of the service is free.

Tom blogs on matters like this and wrote an interesting article pointing out the consumer protection features of debit and credit cards. Please note, debit cards offer less protection. The point is that if a card owner doesn't discover the fraud in a specified time period, they can be held liable for the financial loss. It's probably a good time for everyone to pay attention to their statements, carefully.

Given the mandatory notification laws, which have been passed in almost all 50 states, this is going to equate a lot of people that have to be notified. Simply stated, it's going to be a "notification nightmare." It should be noted that shutting down all the compromised cards and notifying victims is a substantial cost in any data breach.

SC Magazine also covered the story and got a quote from Rich Mogull, founder of IT security consultancy Securosis, who pointed out there is a trend of malicious software being planted somewhere in the processing system in all the high-profile data breaches seen in recent history. TJX (94 million cards compromised), Hannaford and CardSystems (40 million cards compromised) are all being cited as examples.

According to Visa, Heartland was validated as Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant on April 30, 2008. They then stated this status was being reviewed. Trustwave is Heartland's PCI assessor. Hannaford was PCI compliant at the time they were compromised, also. According to the article in SC magazine, TrustWave wouldn't return calls to comment on this.

On the Heartland site, it mentions they are a founding supporter of the Merchant Bill of Rights, which advocates for and educates merchants on fair practices when they accept payment cards. Two of the biggest heartaches for merchants accepting payment cards are the interchange fees and becoming PCI compliant, which is considered an expensive process. Interchange fees are a tariff charged by the credit card companies on every transaction and according to the critics are not very equitable. Estimates have been made in the past that they equate to $30 billion in extra fees added to the cost-of-goods sold with payment cards, yearly. Ultimately, these are costs are often passed on to the consumer.

So far as PCI compliance — which now seems to have been proven ineffective in at least two instances — the National Retail Federation has responded by going on record to challenge the card issuers on their requirements to store data. Because of the cost, a lot of merchants have been slow to adopt PCI data-security standards and the merchants who are not in compliance face fines by the payment card industry.

Storing this data is required to prevent the third headache merchants face when accepting payment cards, or what is known as chargebacks. Chargebacks are when transactions are charged back to a merchant account because of alleged fraud. The NRF contends that being forced to maintain the data to protect themselves makes it easier to compromise.

Heartland is being challenged for releasing this information during the inauguration, when it was less likely to be a hot story. Although this seems to be the case, we need to realize the stakes in data-breaches are high. In the last breach involving a card processor (CardSystems), the card-issuers stopped doing business with the company and the end-result was the company is no longer in existence. Also, it should be pointed out that Heartland wouldn't be the only company that seemed to be very cautious when disclosing the fact that their data was compromised. Once disclosed, there is little doubt that the company in question faces some extremely unfavorable public exposure.

On a closing note, data breaches continue to occur at alarming rates. All sides of the equation need to come together and figure out solutions that work. One of them might be to upgrade the plastic to chip and PIN technology, which has become the standard in other countries. Nigeria was the most recent country to mandate this technology. While this might not directly stop data breaches, it would make it a lot harder to counterfeit the plastic, which is what the criminals use to cash-out the proceeds of data breaches with.

The other problem is that credit card fraud has been made too easy to commit. Card data and the tools to produce counterfeit cards are easy to obtain and even sold in chat rooms. A lot of this technology can also be bought on (what I consider) questionable sites, including eBay. Very few of these fraudsters get caught and because of this; it appears that the activity is getting more and more organized. Historically, the cost of all this seems to have been written off as a cost of doing business. In reality, a lot of these "costs" are passed on to the consumer in the form of higher interest rates and fees.

My prediction is that with the state credit is currently in with the sour economy, coupled with the increase in criminal activity, we are getting to the point where it is going to be hard to simply write-off all the financial costs. Until we start punishing the criminals effectively for this type of activity, it is going to continue to grow and probably prosper.

Update 2/13/09: It appears that the first arrests in the Heartland Data Breach have been made in Leon County, Florida. Three men (Tony Acreus, Jeremy Frazier and Timothy Johns) were encoding numbers stolen in the breach on gift cards and using them at Walmart.

The official press release from the authorities credits Walmart for supporting the investigation.

While it's great a few people got caught -- this probably only accounts for a small amount of the stolen data. My guess is that our three fraudsters bought the numbers via anonymous sources (probably on the Internet).