Massive Romanian credit card ring busted

By

Police arrest gang accused of Australia's largest credit card fraud ring.

Police have swooped on a Romanian hacking ring accused of being responsible for Australia's largest credit card fraud.

The gang is alleged to have stolen half a million banking details and cashed out some $30 million in goods from 30,000 credit cards.

Massive Romanian credit card ring busted

SC first reported the theft in August when it was then thought those responsible could inflict about $25 million in damages from half a million cards.   

Sixteen alleged members of the gang were arrested in Romania by local authorities and Australian Federal Police (AFP).

The gang is accused of stealing credit cards from 100 Australian small and medium sized businesses.

SC understands that police will allege that the gang operated by placing keylogger software on vulnerable point of sale systems and siphoning card data via the remote desktop protocol.

The same gang is also accused of using this method last year to steal a large cache of credit cards affecting some 80,000 customers of Subway restaurants in the United States.

Detective Superintendent Brad Marden told SC in August one of the victim networks was protected with default passwords and carried both benign and unsecured transactional data.

“It’s not massive in the larger scheme of things,” he said. “By far the majority of the work that we’re involved in doesn’t involve uber-technical hackers; they are buying exploit kits and doing SQL Injection all as a result of [a victim’s] poor coding practices.”

The AFP will hold a press conference in Canberra on the arrests.

Got a news tip for our journalists? Share it with us anonymously here.

Copyright © SC Magazine, Australia

Tags:

Most Read Articles

Qantas facing 'significant' data theft after cyber attack

Qantas facing 'significant' data theft after cyber attack

Home Affairs officer accessed data on "friends and associates"

Home Affairs officer accessed data on "friends and associates"

International Criminal Court hit by cyber attack

International Criminal Court hit by cyber attack

Ex-student charged over Western Sydney University cyberattacks

Ex-student charged over Western Sydney University cyberattacks

Log In

  |  Forgot your password?