Stolen Australian credit cards going cheap

By Davey Winder
Saturday, 11 October 2008 17:47

Home IT

Six months ago you could buy stolen US credit card details from the online underground for the seemingly bargain basement price of USD $10 a pop. However, it appears that stolen Australian credit cards have now hit the real rock bottom and can be picked up for as little as just USD $1.50 a time...

Back in March I was writing about the ease with which you could source stolen credit cards online courtesy of an underground crime data exchange service. Then the cost of a Platinum Visa or Mastercard was USD $38, dropping to just $10 for a bog standard classic account card when purchased in volume.

That site was even offering a guarantee that the account details would work, although given the nature of the goods they were dealing in I am not sure exactly who would trust such a warranty!

Now it seems that the credit crunch has hit the stolen credit card business as well, with the underground value of such data dropping faster than a fat bloke in a marathon.

Recent reports suggest that Australia has become something of a bargain bucket as far as buying stolen credit cards is concerned.

The Sydney Morning Herald reckons that you can pick up stolen classic card details for as little as USD $1.50, while the premium cards are only fetching just one dollar more.

Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer with security specialists Finjan, has confirmed that the Australian values are, indeed, correct. Although he says that US and English cardholder information remains at a higher price.

"Our research team spotted this not inconsiderable trade in stolen payment card data back in the late spring, which we published details of in our Q2 Web Security Trends report in July. At that time, however, the going rate was around $15 a pop, so the rate has clearly fallen, perhaps because of the glut of this kind of data being sold on the Internet" Ben-Itzhak told us.

Don't expect to be able to track down the data easily though. Links to it are hidden in plain site within search engine databases including Google. The dealers in stolen cards using their own jargon to form a secret language. 

Understand that and discovering where cheap Australian identities can be found becomes child's play.

Just don't expect them to accept credit card payments...