The Threat Of Stolen Credit Cards From Five Hackers

Have you ever wondered heard about "identity theft"? Well, the video describes how people's credit cards' numbers are being stolen by identity thieves using various methods, such as "Skimming". In this method, the thief swipes the credit card through a small electronic device. In fact, this method can happen anywhere like in gas stations and restaurants.

Cyber crimes from criminal organizations has risen over the past few years many of these have been located overseas and most of them have been based in Eastern Europe that hire and direct hackers on what they want done. The statement has been made that the battle lines between cyber attacks by organized crime reaches far wider than just an institution's firewalls. One such organized cybercrime unit is the Russian Business Network they are one of the more well known criminal organizations delving into the global networks of the financial institutions.

card fraud. In reference to money Laundering we will the complex process of how criminals

Modern organizations that utilize technology must now use their resources to protect themselves from malicious cybercrime activities. A “hacker” could illegally intrude into an organizations information network and use accounting software to mine information and steal assets at a relatively low risk of being caught.

In December of 2013, target corporation faced a serious security breach where over 40 million credit cards were stolen from different target stores. This paper is going to explore the problem, the background information about the problem, the controls that could have been in place to prevent the issue, the intended plan of control and the associated risks involved.

An unauthorized and highly sophisticated malware that not been encountered previously by any security company attacked the point-of-sale systems where all the card information is stored. The outcome of this hacking been extensive and affected millions of customer’s personal and payment data was exposed, results in the payment card compromise of three million customers.

In January 2007, TJX Companies Inc. released a statement to the press that an estimated 40 million of their customer’s credit card accounts had been compromised (although final reports state that over 94 million accounts were affected) (Berg 2008). Through the company’s POS (Point of Sales) system, credit card information was stolen by a ring of hackers and approximately $4.5 billion spent on these cards (Berg 2008). What the hackers did was intercepted the credit card information from customers who swiped their cards at the store and then created their own physical cards using this information. Then they sold the credit cards to people, who turned around and used these cards at retail stores, like Walmart (Agrawal 2011). Three areas of weakness within the company’s IT systems that allowed for an attack of this scale were: inadequate wireless security, improper storage of customer data and failure to encrypt customer account data (Berg 2008).

Michael’s Store, Inc. is an arts & crafts Retail chain. It has more than 1040 stores located in 49 US states & Canada. The company also owns and operates the Aaron brother’s retail chain, which happens to have an additional 115 stores across the Country. Michael’s store Inc. had a Security breach, which took place between May 8, 2013 and January 27, 2014. About 2.6 million cards or about 7 percent of payment cards used at its stores during the period were affected. Alarmingly, its subsidiary Aaron brothers also had been breached between June 26, 2013 and February 27, 2014. It was reported that Aaron brothers had 400,000 cards impacted. The duration of the treacherous attack in total was 8 months (Schwartz, 2014). In this report, security breach of Michael’s store Inc. is analyzed. The topics covered are how the breach occurred, what did the authorities do to educate the customers & how in future such attacks can be avoided.

Once on Target’s network with elevated privileges the attackers were able to launch malware to the POS systems that would capture the credit card information of the consumers as they swiped their cards to pay for their items. They launched a second piece of malware that that would take the captured information and move it to a dump server on the internal network. Once the information was on the dump server it them

In December 2013, Target announced that massive amounts of credit and debit card information they collected over the years might be in the danger of theft. The credit card breach could affect as many as 70 million customers who swept cards in the retail stores or linked their cards with the membership card, the RedCard. Each card information contains a card number, holder’s name, address, phone number and etc. The more information the thieves got, the more conveniently the thieves could use them to get benefits from the card holders. Jia Lynn Yang and Amrita Jayakumar, the authors of “Target says up to 70 million more customers were hit by December data breach”, write about how bad people will use customers’ information to crime. These thieves possibly shop online by inserting the card information. They could also contact with the victims to gather more sensitive information, and even hack into their computers. This event forces us to seriously consider the crisis in how retails protect customers’ data (Yang &

Last year, The US retailer, Target, reported that there were almost forty million transaction information been stolen by hacker. Those information include card numbers, name, expired date and security code, and the information can be used for making counterfeits. The theft seriously damaged Target’s reputation and shareholders' equity. According to the CNN news, Target might loss $148 million in this accident.

He is has been indicted after hacked into OIB’s (Online Information Bureau, Inc.) computer system and control the entire network of OIB by obtained its key passwords. OIB is the business which helps out retail and Internet bargainer by, among other things, websites hosting and credit card data’s processing and other financial transactions. It is Connecticut Corporation based in Vernon, Connecticut. In this capacity, the role of OIB is as a financial transaction “clearinghouse”, by combining and assisting in debiting or crediting of funds against each account for thousands of retail and Internet purchasers and vendors. The acts of Aleksey Vladimirovich Ivanov is considered threatened because manage all things that related to data of financial from companies’ credit card and other financial institutions, collecting and maintaining the information of customer credit card, the numbers of bargainer account are the job of OIB. Because by have that data Aleksey Vladimirovich Ivanov threaten OIB that he will destruct the computer system of OIB if OIB did not fulfill his demand that which request OIB to give him $10,000 as making the system secure

Credit card theft is a serious crime that many people suffer from each year. It is the act of someone’s credit card being stolen and used by another person without the cardholders permission. The credit card theft offense is getting more recognized each year. This crime affects both the criminal and the victim.The criminal, who is well aware of the crime anyway, is putting themselves in serious danger with the law. Whoever commits credit card theft and pleads guilty can serve up to 20 years in a state correctional institute with a maximum fine of $2,500.

For some individuals, hacking can be a hobby they like to undertake in order to analyze how many computers or the systems they can gain access to. While hacking seems harmless, there are those who do this vice maliciously so that they can get access to customer/ client information, the details of credit cards, their passwords, email addresses and identity fraud (Riem, 2001). Having this unauthorized access to these information warrants an arrest, and should the criminals be found, they are liable for their crimes.

Almost all kind of large and small organizations might face increasing number of attacks into their network or intellectual property. This may lead to data disclosure, data destruction, and damage of organization’s reputation. There are numerous threats in the cyber space which might be capable of stealing, destroying or making use of out sensitive data for financial and non-financial gains. As the amount of computer, mobile and internet users increases, so does the number of exploiters.