eBay Customers Targetted by Credit Card Scam 237
hether writes "Customers of the auction site eBay have been targeted by a site called ebayupdates.com. The site attempts to steal credit card details from eBay's 55 million customers. The SANS Institute Internet Storm Center issued the warning on this one. Info about the scam can be found on the BBC site, CNN, CNet, vnunet, and more.
Funny enough there's no mention of this on the eBay site..."
Less danger online than in a store. (Score:2)
Only foolish people are getting caught in this scam, much like more traditional con artists. It is sad but everyone should take a moment to talk to their grandparents about how to avoid this stuff, and then go on about our ways.
Surprise! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Surprise! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Surprise! (Score:2)
Of course if you click on that link, you get presented with a page which looks remarkably similar to the paypal front page. The unaware victim/user will attempt to log in with their email/password, and then be presented with a fake error and perhaps then be redirected to the real paypal site (storing the userid/password in the process). The user attempts their login again, and is probably unaware anything happened.
Re:Surprise! (Score:3, Interesting)
The funny thing is that the eBay scams thing happens to the email-address that I used for eBay, never disclosed to anyone outside of eBay, except for two people that I purchased items from. Funny thing that. I suppose they must've guessed my address. =)
(In plain text, I'm getting eBay scam email from an email-address that, if I didn't absolutely trust eBay's integrity, I might suspect that eBay sold to the scammers)
What? (Score:3, Informative)
Sounds like they've mentioned it on the website to me.....
Re:What? (Score:4, Informative)
Some members have reported attempts to gain access to their personal information through email solicitations that are falsely made to appear as having come from eBay. These solicitations will often contain links to Web pages that will request that you sign in and submit information. At eBay, we identify these as 'spoofed' emails or Web sites.
We encourage you to be very cautious of emails that ask you to submit personal information such as your credit card number or your eBay password.
To be sure that you are signing into a genuine eBay Web site, look at the Address/Location area of your browser. At an eBay.com sign-in or log-in page, the URL (link) that appears in the Address/Location area of your browser will begin with "http://cgi.ebay.com/" or "http://scgi.ebay.com". Please pay close attention to all characters in the address, including the forward slash (/) that follows "ebay.com". Even if the Address/Location includes the word "ebay", it may not be a genuine eBay Web site. If you receive or suspect you have received such an email, do not respond to it or click the links. Immediately send a copy of it to spam@ebay.com.
If you have any doubt as to whether or not the website you are on is an official eBay web page, please visit our Account Security page for more complete information on the URLs used on eBay web pages.
For more information on how to protect your eBay password and your account, click here [ebay.com].
Regards,
eBay
Re:What? (Score:2)
Re:What? (Score:2, Informative)
Sounds like they've mentioned it on the website to me.....
I received the spam on this one about a week ago. I haven't received *any* warning from eBay on being careful with ID or personal info, even as a general warning, particularly via email. I'm sure, as most things I've found, there is a warning buried deep within eBay and only those with the greatest of patience and available time (or just luck) actually can find it. The site is poorly designed for navigation.
About a month ago I attempted to post a similar article as this to Slashdot concerning very much the same style of attack in an email from a www.paypal-ebay.com site, registered to some schmuck in Nebraska. I tried, carefully worded with good references, etc. to get submit it and it died both times. So, slashdot, which often runs duplicate stories, missed the boat on that one.
You can see some of it here:
The email [dragonswest.com]
The webpage [dragonswest.com]
It's amazing what a pain it was trying to raise anyone at eBay or PayPal with their forms, etc. Customer service at both are terrible, just terrible. I only got through to PayPal with the help of some information provided by a powerseller friend. PayPal said, "yeah we know about it and are trying to shut the site down", this 6 hours after I got the spam and the site was still up at that point. Forwarding passwords to the email address of paypal@c2.hu
So be careful, eh? Not many people are as helpful as the users.
Re:What? (Score:1)
You are either blind or you have never used ebay. Every single email I get from them contains the following warning:And from the page mentioned above:
So, are you a troll or a fool?
Re:What? (Score:1)
The site hasn't shutdown because I got another idnetical email from the same losers since then.
Re:What? (Score:2)
Have you tried to find it on their website? Check their front page [ebay.com]. Nothing there. How about under "help?" Nope. Maybe under "SafeHarbor (Rules & Safety)" - sounds promising. Nothing there either.
I search for a couple of minutes and didn't find it. Do you think someone not even looking for it would find the warning?
Re:What? (Score:2)
strange.. seems to be down.. =) (Score:5, Informative)
Domain Name.......... ebayupdates.com
Creation Date........ 2002-12-06
Registration Date.... 2002-12-06
Expiry Date.......... 2003-12-06
Organisation Name.... Tred
Organisation Address. 1742 BOLTON VILLAGE LANE
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address. NICEVILLE
Organisation Address. 32578
Organisation Address. FL
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES
Admin Name........... Eulalia Bergenthal
Admin Address........ 1742 BOLTON VILLAGE LANE
Admin Address........
Admin Address........ NICEVILLE
Admin Address........ 32578
Admin Address........ FL
Admin Address........ UNITED STATES
Admin Email.......... qspam52@aol.com
Admin Phone.......... 713-552-6332
Admin Fax............
Tech Name............ YahooDomains Techcontact
Tech Address......... 701 First Ave.
Tech Address.........
Tech Address......... Sunnyvale
Tech Address......... 94089
Tech Address......... CA
Tech Address......... UNITED STATES
Tech Email........... domain.tech@YAHOO-INC.COM
Tech Phone........... +1.6198813096
Tech Fax.............
Name Server.......... yns1.yahoo.com
Name Server.......... yns2.yahoo.com
Re:strange.. seems to be down.. =) (Score:3, Funny)
Yahoodomains.com: Get your own eBay-like domainname & web-card from $35/Year!
Package includes:
Re:strange.. seems to be down.. =) (Score:3, Informative)
This really isn't that new: it's been discussed on incidents@securiyfocus.com for the past few days. From that list:
The form posts to
http://www.cutandpastescripts.com/cgi-bin/formp
It has the following hidden fields, with the following values
activenumber 428283597791
username xacxac
MfcISAPICommand SingInWelcome
siteid 0
co_partnerId 2
UsingSSL 0
ru
pp
pa1
pa2
pa3
i1 -1
pageType -1
and the following field names, that are entered by the user on the form
name
address
City
State
Zip
Phone
cc
exp
Cvv2
Bank Name
Bank #
checking_account_number
Routing_number
ssn
dob
dl#
userid
pass (password)
submit (value=Sign In)
keepMeSignInOption (checkbox, checked value=1)
Re:strange.. seems to be down.. =) (Score:3, Funny)
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address. NICEVILLE
Organisation Address. 32578
Organisation Address. FL
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES
ebay scam repayments (Score:5, Funny)
Re:ebay scam repayments (Score:4, Funny)
Re:ebay scam repayments (Score:2)
Maybe it should be a Dutch auction. Can you sell an unlimited number of copies in a Dutch auction?
Re:ebay scam repayments (Score:1)
What? (Score:1, Funny)
I helped shut one of these guys down (Score:4, Interesting)
The site was at http://www.cgi5-ebay.cc/eBayISAPIdll/signin.html. Obvious to any experienced computer user as a scam.
But since I was sure unsuspecting users may be duped, I decided to do something about it. I contacted the service provider, A Plus (aka Abacus), informed them of the scam, and requested that they shut it down. Within an hour the site was offline.
Too bad I didn't submit this to news wire services. Oh well.
Re:I helped shut one of these guys down (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I helped shut one of these guys down (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I helped shut one of these guys down (Score:2)
I don't know how competent the law enforcement people are where you are located, but one time I was actually questioned by the police in my town because someone was e-mailbombing a school and the police assumed it was from me because the person had put my e-mail address in the 'from' line! I would not trust these people to track down the owners of a fraudulent web site if it was hosted in their jurisdiction. (The officer actually admitted that she didn't even own a computer.)
Re:I helped shut one of these guys down (Score:3, Interesting)
The easiest way to avoid getting duped is simply to always interact with the site through normal channels. Even the message looks totally legit, still login as you do normally. This eliminates the possability that you are entering a 3rd party site by accident.
Re:I helped shut one of these guys down (Score:2)
Pinged change-ebay.com, and it resolved to an address that was obviously not ebay. The site was an exact copy of the ebay login page. Looked at the source code of the site, and it was a form that, on submit, emailed the ebay username and password to some scam artist and then forwarded the user to the real ebay home page.
I notified ebay through their tech support form and the scam site was down within hours. Not a word of thanks or warning posted from ebay though. They're probably dealing with hundreds of these scams.
Re:I helped shut one of these guys down (Score:1)
A sneaky semantic attack [kuro5hin.org], but sorry, no cookies for the spammers... I received a few spams that had that kind of thing, except that it was about PayPal. http://www.whatever.paypal.com@longlistofstuff... I mean, it was *very* loosely copied and they had not removed the code inserted by whatever they used to save the page with. The form used someone else's unsecured formmail.pl to send the credit card info to a Yahoo! address...
I mailed about this to the originator, ISP, the formmail's host (I think, been a while) and Yahoo, and I heard the stuff was closed... Yahoo! address was closed within the next day, I think.
Of course, some time later I got very similar message. Spammers are like mythical monsters: Cut off one head, and more heads will grow... but luckily the intelligence won't grow =)
Re:I helped shut one of these guys down (Score:2)
I've seen this on a couple of occaions as well, but for paypal as opposed to ebay. The URLs were more obviously fake but I notified the network admins anyway and the person who bought one of the domains is now being charged with fraud!
The obvious tip-off was that someone was just sending mail at random, hoping to catch paypal users. The account I received that message at had nothing to do with paypal. (And now I as will will have nothing to do with paypal [paypalwarning.com].
Re:I helped shut one of these guys down (Score:1)
I tried to figure out how to report it to eBay but couldn't find out how. It took me a while to find the "report it to spam@ebay.com". Yeah, like they pay attention to that. I don't think eBay cares at all.
I checked out one of them, and it was geocities. I sent geocities an email and the site was removed.
I've been an eBay member for a long time, and I remember when you just owed them 85 cents, Pierre Omidyar (the owner) would say "Nah, don't worry about it. You're a good customer. Wait until it gets higher to pay". I think he lives on a yacht now and doesn't care about eBay at all, as long as he's still making millions of it.
Slashdot Brings Justice to the People! (Score:5, Funny)
Solution:
Kudos to
Re:Slashdot Brings Justice to the People! (Score:3, Funny)
Why the automatic assumption that the riaa is a scam? They support the development and careers of many talented musicians. All they are doing is rightfully protecting their own copyrighted interests, in the name of protecting the earnings of the hard working artists and musicians. The RIAA and MPAA's only goal is the advancement of the arts.
Oh, wait.
[engage Slashdot filter]
KILL THEM ALL!! MAKE THEIR SCSI DRIVES BLEED!! THE RIAA AND MPAA ARE AS EVIL AS MICROSOFT AND CONGRESS!! ALL INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE!!
[disengage Slashdot filter]
There, that makes sense now.
Re:Slashdot Brings Justice to the People! (Score:2)
The site was shut down quite a while ago. So we're slashdoting a null point on the net (which I believe would be yahoo's nameservers's but, check the whois and see for yourself)
Re:Slashdot Brings Justice to the People! (Score:1)
Old News (Score:2, Informative)
There prolly was a week ago when the news broke about it though.. check web-caches and the like. That or edit the story to begin with "You probably already know about this, but..."
Not really (was:Old News) (Score:1)
Re:Old News (Score:1)
I don't pay much attention to the eBay news. It should be in the SafeHarbor (Rules & Safety), instead of eBay geeks talking about it on their chatrooms.
Re:Old News (Score:2)
It says:
Some members have reported attempts to gain access to their personal information through email solicitations that are falsely made to appear as having come from eBay. These solicitations will often contain links to Web pages that will request that you sign in and submit information. At eBay, we identify these as 'spoofed' emails or Web sites.
We encourage you to be very cautious of emails that ask you to submit personal information such as your credit card number or your eBay password.
To be sure that you are signing into a genuine eBay Web site, look at the Address/Location area of your browser. At an eBay.com sign-in or log-in page, the URL (link) that appears in the Address/Location area of your browser will begin with "http://cgi.ebay.com/" or "http://scgi.ebay.com". Please pay close attention to all characters in the address, including the forward slash (/) that follows "ebay.com". Even if the Address/Location includes the word "ebay", it may not be a genuine eBay Web site. If you receive or suspect you have received such an email, do not respond to it or click the links. Immediately send a copy of it to spam@ebay.com.
If you have any doubt as to whether or not the website you are on is an official eBay web page, please visit our Account Security page for more complete information on the URLs used on eBay web pages.
For more information on how to protect your eBay password and your account, click here [ebay.com].
Regards,
eBay
Re:Old News (Score:1)
As to the consistency thing, piss off. If you can't at least log in to say something, shut your mouth. Whiny little bitch.
Spam (Score:2, Offtopic)
I keep hearing about the "death of email" because of spam. It's really not hard. Pay for a respectable email address and don't give it to *anyone*. Create forwarding addresses that you give out. Apply whitelists to the address(es) you use for commerce. Apply blacklists (or actual spam filters) to the addresses you use for friends, family, etc. Every few weeks I go through the ~1000 emails that got filtered out on the odd chance they're not spam, and delete them. It doesn't take an hour a day - it takes more like an hour a month.
Re:Spam (Score:1)
Do what I did. I have my own domain with a respectable e-mail server that automatically blackholes any updates from several of the good Blackhole Sites.
Computer Redneck
Did you think a Redneck could support a website? Sure you just need the right number of cement blocks.
Amazon.com sues ebayupdates.com (Score:5, Funny)
"The one-click credit card number stealing algorithm employed by ebayupdates.com is a clear violation of amazon.com's one click transaction patent," said amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos in a statement. "Let this be a message to other sites like ebayupdates.com: Amazon.com will not tolerate one-click theft."
When reached for comment, an amazon.com spokeswoman clarified that amazon.com would not take action against a process that used at least two mouse clicks.
This is not a unique happening.... (Score:4, Informative)
I really don't know why this particular instance was picked up by the big news corporations....
Re:This is not a unique happening.... (Score:2)
Consider this: It's X-mas time. People are shopping more, online and off. Hey lets do a PSA and boost our ratings.
The news agency could probably care less, they are just using time and circumstance to thier benefit.
ebay Response for 06-Dec-2002 (Score:2)
There may have been something else more specific on the main page, but this page is all that seems to be left.
Will this ever not work? (Score:1)
Telling someone that service X has lost their credit card information probably has the same hit rate of any other spam, 1-2%. It doesn't take much to make a lot of money off of stupid people.
That theory worked years ago, and it still works today. The way I see it, 1 of 2 things needs to happen for this to stop.
1) Greedy people have to develop some ethics
or
2) People have to become less stupid
Experts predict that either one could happen around, oh, never.
Similar PayPal scam (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Similar PayPal scam (Score:2)
Re:Similar PayPal scam (Score:2)
with that info some one could rip all your money of your account! thats prety damn rough
Re:Similar PayPal scam (Score:2)
Heh heh. I just filled in some bogus info (had to guess what US phone numbers look like, etc). Is SSN 9 digits long?
But concider it evolution. Those stupid enough to give their SSN, passwds, pin, account numbers etc deserve to lose.
FYI (Score:2)
US SSNs are 9 digits long and are normally seperated as such: 123-45-6789.
Re:Similar PayPal scam (Score:1)
i can't help but agree that people who fall for something like this deserve it. i refer to things such as this as the "idiot tax."
Everyone loves a little whois... (Score:1)
Results:
OrgName: Autobahn Access Corporation
OrgID: ATOB
NetRange: 66.187.64.0 - 66.187.79.255
CIDR: 66.187.64.0/20
NetName: AUTOBAHN-1BLK
NetHandle: NET-66-187-64-0-1
Parent: NET-66-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
NameServer: ONE.AUTOBAHN.MB.CA
NameServer: TWO.AUTOBAHN.MB.CA
Comment: ADDRESSES WITHIN THIS BLOCK ARE NON- PORTABLE
RegDate: 2001-11-14
Updated: 2001-11-14
TechHandle: AD163-ARIN
TechName: Dostmohamed, Arif
TechPhone: +1-204-982-6629
TechEmail: Arif@autobahn.mb.ca
Is it gone already or not yet here? (Score:1)
Host ebayupdates.com not found: 2(SERVFAIL)
I get the whois record just fine, though.
ebayupdates.com slashdotted (Score:1, Offtopic)
krystal_blade
Re:ebayupdates.com slashdotted (Score:1)
I don't know if it's just a denial of service. The nameservers for ebayupdates.com are pointing to DNS servers that refuse to accept requests for the domain. i.e. it looks like their ISP killed them.
I was targetted about 5 weeks ago (Score:2, Interesting)
I got one of these emails in which they claimed that eBay has lost some information and needed me to go to some website and fill in some information about my self.
I never got that far, SpamAssassin stripped out the HTML and exposed all the real URL's.
I forwarded the email to eBay.com but I've never heard anything about it. That was before Thanksgiving or earlier. I didn't keep the original email, it served no purpose to me anymore.
Re:I was targetted about 5 weeks ago (Score:2)
She used to forward me every urban legend. I would tell her they were false and she would huff "I'm not going to believe anything I get in email". She fixed the problem by taking me off the forward list.
I think she gets a virus a week. I'd hate to be her computer tech.
Offtopic, Yes, But... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now to get myself back on topic. If you use a credit card on ebay, you're insane. Every time I deal on ebay, I only use postal money orders. Period. It's no big thing to go to your local post office to get/cash one. Unless some idiot is counterfitting things [slashdot.org], it's the most secure way I can find to do business on an auction site. And it's not like it's a big pain in the ass, either. Every town has a post office. If it doesn't, the next town over probably does.
It basically boils down to the fact that these are issued by the government. You'ld have to be insane to want to commit fraud when dealing with PMOs. You either have balls the size of Alaska or a brain the size of the period at the end of this sentance. Using a credit card on ebay is like saying "Hey. Take my valuable information, please!"
Sites like ebay should also provide an easy-to-access list of 100% trusted partner sites. Just because an URL contains the name "ebay" in it doesn't mean it's alright. Let's face it: apart from we ubergeeks and a small percentage of the non-geek population, most people are just dumb as rocks when it comes to dealing with anything on the net, let alone any form of e-commerce. It should fall upon sites like ebay to educate their users, even just a little bit.
Re:Offtopic, Yes, But... (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't have to submit the ole CC to buy something, only to sell.
eBay Membership (Score:1)
You have no choice but to use a credit card if your going to sell something on Ebay. They started forcing people to attach a credit card number to their account as a means of reducing the amount of fraudulent accounts people would set up to scam other Ebay users out of money.
You don't have to submit the ole CC to buy something, only to sell.
Older memberships are grandfathered, with no credit card demanded.
(BTW, it's possible at a local bank hereabouts to purchase (Charter One Bank, and for a short time it's free of charge over the face value) a "temporary" MasterCard "FlexCard" debit card with a fixed face value up to $500 (I believe). I purchased one at the "no-fees" promotional price of only face value specifically to use with a site from which I wished to purchase something without risking the debit card for my main checking account).
Re:Offtopic, Yes, But... (Score:2, Insightful)
You'ld have to be insane to want to commit fraud when dealing with PMOs. You either have balls the size of Alaska or a brain the size of the period at the end of this sentance
I would think that to do this stuff in the first place you would fit under one of these categories, no?
Re:Offtopic, Yes, But... (Score:1)
Slashdotted the Scam site (Score:1)
this really is an old story (Score:3, Informative)
If Slashdot is just now getting to this, why bother? I would hope that the users are informed enough already to catch this kind of thing for one as well as reading the mainstream news.
Hahahah We /.ed those bastard (Score:1)
So it goes (Score:1)
Now, if somehow fraud was to increase quite dramatically, then you might see this change.
how can I get scammed when the site is down? (Score:1)
damn, I wanted my credit cards to be raped and pillaged.
another one (Score:2)
fortunately it appears to be down now.
Kablooie! (Score:1)
problem solved (Score:1)
SPAM the SCAMer (Score:1)
http://www.ebaybillingservice.com (Score:1)
AOL (Score:1)
Unfortunately, these work (on trusting people) (Score:2)
Ebay is smart enough to cover a lot of their bases, for example, Canadian ebay'ers might be tricked into trying ebaycanada.com, except ebay has already been smart enough to grab:
ebaycanada.ca
ebaycanada.com
ebaycanada.net
They did miss, however (according to my domain search) ebaycanada.org, but you can't get 'em all.
All somebody really needs to do is make a duplicate of a common site, or way for a new domain extension.
ebaysales.com, ebaymarketing.com, they all "sound" like they are affiliated with ebay. If they look the same, how are you to know the difference?
Incidentally, ebaysales is taken for all the most common extensions except ebaysales.ca
It's social engineering at its worst. When you see something that looks like it's associated with something else, acts like it's associate, many people just assume "they must be part of the same thing." It's in many ways similar to scams like the "Domain Registry of XXX."
In Canada, they used marking very similar to the Canadian government to look affiliated, and also wrote their "renewal" letters which lead many people to believe they were affiliated with the original domain provider. Eventually the use of government markings got them nailed, but for every one of these slimey scammers that get shut down, it seems two more pop up.
Getting this info on slashdot is nice. If the server hadn't already been shut down, a good slashdotting probably would have helped put some sand in the gears.
Re:Unfortunately, these work (on trusting people) (Score:1)
Re:Unfortunately, these work (on trusting people) (Score:2)
Even so though, you'd bound to have stupid users who fall for it no matter what the parent company does. And as long as you have foolish users, you'll have somebody trying to make a buck (or a thousand bucks, or several-hundred-thousand) off of them.
These scams happen constantly. (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Partially (but not expertly) forged mail headers.
2. Web site which looks pretty authentic but isn't hosted at eBay (imagine that!)
3. A threat of some sort -- "If you fail to verify your information within four days, your account will be suspended."
4. Grammar or spelling mistakes if you look closely.
When I got my first couple of these a year ago or so, I dutifully reported the messages to eBay and the abuse@ addresses for the mail server and Web host used in the transactions. But now I receive so many of them, I just ignore them.
I nope not too many people are dumb enough to fall for this, but sadly, I suspect that some are...
think of the uninitiated (Score:2, Insightful)
Thanks Yahoo for hosting these slime (Score:2)
It's a shame that both eBay and Yahoo make it so hard to find a contact address, and that even after I made the efforts they didn't make an effort in return.
Live from Dr. Cody's spambox... (Score:1)
An identity-theft scam, with DMCA protection! (Score:5, Interesting)
The spam I got was more then just credit card theft, it was an attempt at full-bore identity theft! The spam directed the user to a web page that asked for, among other things, my social security number, mother's maiden name, and drivers license number. (see Appendix A at the end of this post)
On top of that, the spam was encrypted! I tried to look at the source code, but instead found a javascript program, containing a decryption algorithm, and pages and pages of encrypted data. (See Appendix B at the end of this post) The function of this program is obvious. The program overlays itself with the decrypted identity-theft program, then runs it.
Naturally I didn't fill out the form or click submit once I saw what the web page was, but I did execute the encrypted program by following the link in the email, and I was able to use "View Page Source" to locate and capture the complete decryption algorithm and encrypted identity-theft program.
This is an interesting situation.
Here we have a piece of spam containing a Javascript program, which comprises a technological measure that controls access to another piece of either HTML or possibly Javascript (the copyright-protected identity-theft program), which in turn may or may not exploit some netscape or IE bug to steal my personal information.
Or it might operate at face-value, generating a simple HTML form, collecting field information, and sending the information off to a remote identity-theft collection computer.
I can't tell without (trivially) bypassing the technological measure, by altering the program to display the plaintext of the identity-theft program
instead of executing it.
This technological measure (the javascript program) is obviously designed to prevent me (the intended identity-theft victim) from gaining access to the copyrighted identity-theft program to examine it.
Therefore, this whole identity theft scam is fully DMCA-protected! It would be a violation of 17 USC 1201(a) for me to alter the decryption program in such a way as to display the identity-theft program (and learn if I was an actual victim or just a potential victim.) It would be a violation of 17 USC 1201(b) for you to post a followup message explaining how to do it. The DMCA provides no exception for potential or actual victims of this sort of spam fraud, or for individuals attempting to aid potential or actual victims of this sort of spam fraud, or for individuals attempting to research this type of fraud.
So what if I were just to ignore the DMCA, decrypt the identity-theft program and reveal its contents? Obviously, the identity-theft ring isn't going to step forward and sue me, because presumably they are trying to conceal their identities and activities. That doesn't mean that I'm safe though. The problem is that under the DMCA, I would be risking Federal prosecution, even if all I was trying to do was determine whether I was an actual victim of identity theft!
In reality, I suspect that I would not be prosecuted by the Federal Government in this particular instance, but then who knows these days. The law is supposed to provide equal protection. In this case, not prosecuting me (for discovering for myself whether I was the victim of identity theft) would illustrate the selective enforcement of the DMCA. Dmitry Sklyarov faced prosecution by the Federal Government for bypassing a technological measure controlling access to ebooks, even after Adobe backed away from the lawsuit.
How am I supposed to know whether or not I would face prosecution for exposing an identity-theft scam? Why should I, or anyone else, take the risk?
APPENDIX A: Information requested by the identity-theft program.
Full Name (Include your full middle name)
Address
City
State
Zip Code
Phone Number
Credit Card Number
Expiration Date
Cvv2 (Last 3 digits located behind your credit card or (4 digits for AMEX located on the front above your credit card number)
Bank Name
Bank Phone Number (Located on the back of the credit card)
Social Security Number
Mothers Maiden Name
Date Of Birth
Drivers License Number
eBay User ID
You can also use your registered email.
eBay Password
APPENDIX B: The javascript program itself.
function process(ar)
{
var Stri=''
var y, z, sum, n, n1, number, j=0
var key = new Array(25960,31077,121,104)
n1=4
for (j=0; j0)
{
z-=(y>5)+key[3]
y-=(z>5)+key[1]
sum-=0x9E3779B9
}
Stri+=String.fromCharCode(y&0xFF)+String.fromCh
String.fromCharCode((y>>16)&0x
Stri+=String.fromCharCode(z&0x
String.fromCharCode((z>>16)&0x
}
document.write(Stri)
Stri=''
}
}
function start() {
var ar=new Array()
ar[0]=new Array(-476521852,-2058851006,-25665082,
ar[13]=new Array(-575491891,665716493,
process(ar)
}
start()
(I had to alter the spacing of the "Stri+=" lines because of the lameness filter:
Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.
Also, slash appears to have inserted a space in the second "fromCharCode" in each line that isn't really there. Whatever.)
"White Hat" identity-fraud consumer awareness? (Score:2)
in other news (Score:2)
Last Post! (Score:1)
-- Steve Nesbitt, voice of Mission Control, January 28,
1986, as the shuttle Challenger exploded within view
of the grandstands.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...
Re:Yet another example of bad security (Score:3, Insightful)
Yup -- been around for CENTURIES (Score:2, Funny)
Yup. Getting people to offer up their credit card numbers has been around for centuries.
The Spanish and English coming to North America and STEALING the American Indians' land? Nope -- they got them to offer up their credit card numbers and then purchased the land fraudulantly.
The Soviets STEALING the soverignty of Eastern Bloc nations? Nope -- they just got them to offer up their credit card numbers...
Don't even get me STARTED about the 2000 election...
(Its all a joke, folks, relax.)
Re:Yup -- been around for CENTURIES (Score:2, Insightful)
Otherwise you'd have at least 2 comments calling you a dumb-ass. 1 comment correcting you on "its" vs "it's". 3 comments, saying you were joking. The 2 that called you a dumb-ass would have to defend themselves. And there'd be 20 comments over the whole thing before it fizzled out.
Re:Yup -- been around for CENTURIES (Score:1)
Of course narcissist that I am, I always check to see how many people have replied to my comments. (+5 is nice, but seeing REPLIES 10+ is always what gives me that warm fuzzy feeling...)
Maybe I should have left out that disclaimer, eh?
(Thanks for the embedded tip about the spelling mistake, btw. I am a bit of a stickler for getting it right so the ego was a little bruised to see that one slip past -- but since someone else took the time to catch it and point it out, my faith in the world grew by almost exactly the same amount. I'd call it a wash, wouldn't you?)
Social engineering (Score:3, Insightful)
They've been used on AOL subscribers (we are updated our database! Email your login/password to this address to ensure uninterrupted service), and even (legitimately) by sysadmins to check on the cluefulness of their own users... see how many ppl will Email you their login/passwords.
That mantle of authority/legitimacy is a powerful psychological tool... provides a lot of social control in some arenas. But I'm not saying it's always good... when people are trained/socialized to listen and not ask questions at all... well... you get victimized by stuff like this. Not to sound like a bumper sticker, but "question authority" is pretty good advice sometimes.
A little bit of cynicism and skepticism go a long way, particularly on the 'Net.
Re:Yet another example of bad security (Score:4, Informative)
This is not about eBay's security. It's about a spam scammer that tricks users into going to a third party website and reenter their credit card details.
Though, I'm sure the scammer encrypts all credit card details, in order to protect the customers. =)
Yet another example of DUMBASS NOT READING ARTICLE (Score:2)
Just the usual victimization of the stupid. Most people apparently didn't fall for it and just notified eBay of the scam, and the scamming site was shut down in short order (I believe it's been down at least a couple days now.)
Good to know internet consumers are gradually getting less gullible.
Re:Yet another example of DUMBASS NOT READING ARTI (Score:3, Funny)
CNN is reporting: "HUNDREDS FOOLED AS EBAY SCAM STORY IS POSTED TO FAKE SLASHDOT SITE". The article goes on to say, "Many SlashDot regulars looking for easy karma were duped into posting their carefully crafted trolls and comments to a fraudulent site set up at http://brak.slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org] officials said early Friday morning. CmdrTaco has been unavailable for comment."
Re:Uh..did we not see this earlier? (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.msnbc.com/news/837882.asp [msnbc.com]
Re:Uh..did we not see this earlier? (Score:2)
I understand a lot of people have been victimized by it [paypalsucks.com].