Stolen card details advertised on Twitter

According to Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer with F-Secure, tweets coming from 'Sshoaib Ahmed' route users to a web page that details his offerings.

The prices of stolen card credentials on Twitter, he notes, range from $2.00 to $20.00, depending on the country where the credentials were stolen from.

"Alternatively, if you'd rather not use stolen credit cards yourself, you can have him buy you iPhones, iPads and laptops with stolen credit cards and ship them to you", he said in his latest security blog.

"In practice, the thief will log into an online store, then purchase an iPad as a gift purchase, giving your address as the delivery address and paying for the goods with a stolen credit card. An iPad bought like this goes for $150", he adds.

That may sound like a good deal, Infosecurity notes, until you realise that in dealing with the fraudster you could be charged under the Theft Act with receiving stolen goods or, perhaps worse, charged with conspiracy, both of which will result in your having a criminal record.

Hypponen reports that the keyloggers that Sshoaib Ahmed has been using to collate his or her data have also been used to harvest online services, which explains why s/he is selling access to an online account with a balance of $28,000 for $1,000.

"Finally, to prove he really has the goods, the vendor posts "demo" information. Which basically is personal information of handful of victims, including names, home addresses, credit card numbers and passwords", he says.

What’s hot on Infosecurity Magazine?