Amiga ISO Collection/AmigaDemoCD2.iso/ASCII/TEXTE/SCENE/HPA/HACKING/WPCAP.LZH/wp.cap

Text File | 1991-09-26 | 11.8 KB | 223 lines

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 Here are a few articles from the Washington Post about stolen Credit Cards !
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Hacked from the Washington Posts Computer on 2.9.91 by FRED (Hannover,Germany)
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                          ... enjoy it !


4215tm--f
u w bc-phones-card     09-01 0624
^bc-phones-card<
^(wap) (ATTN: National, Financial editors)<
^Stolen Credit Card Number's Oddessy: $3,536 in Illegal<
^Phone Charges (Washn)<
^By Cindy Skrzycki=
^(c) 1991, The Washington Post=
       WASHINGTON _ Bad news travels fast, and stolen phone credit card
numbers travel faster.
       The credit card number of one American Telephone & Telegraph Co.
customer, obtained illegally July 4, was in circulation for the next
11 days, crisscrossing several long-distance networks that girdle
the world.
       The bill for the illegal calls came to $3,536.75.
       The card number was stolen when Kirstin Downey, a Washington Post
reporter on her wedding trip, got off a cruise ship at port on Kauai
in the Hawaiian Islands to make a call shortly before 11 a.m. to her
mother in San Francisco.
       Standing at a bank of phone booths on a busy pier, she tried to
use her AT&T credit card, but US Sprint Communications Co. was the
long-distance carrier at that spot.
       After a Sprint operator came on the line to explain the problem,
Downey repeated the calling card number to her several times. Within
minutes the worldwide odyssey of the card number had begun.
       Someone had listened carefully, heard the number and put it into
circulation.
       The first illegal calls were made on the AT&T network about 11
a.m. July 4 from two places in Hawaii _ Lihue and Honolulu _ to
Porterville, Calif., a town south of Fresno. Later in the day calls
were made to a cluster of towns and cities in California.
       Calling also began on MCI Communications Corp.'s network from
Porterville. Far fewer calls were made on the MCI network before the
number was canceled, but many of them were to overseas points.
       By the time the card was taken out of service 11 days later, 93
calls had been made from the same pay phone in Porterville. The
calls went out over Pacific Bell Co., AT&T and MCI Communications
Corp. lines to a cluster of cities and towns in California, to the
United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Britain, Germany,
Seattle, San Francisco, Buffalo and Brooklyn and Rochester, N.Y.
       As the card was passed around to other states, calling became
heavy on the AT&T network, with 80 calls July 12 and 155 calls July
13. Porterville continued to show up, but by now calls were going
out from Queens, N.Y., as well as from small towns in California,
Detroit, Seattle, Honolulu and Chicago. Forty-five calls also were
made on Pacific Bell lines July 13.
       From July 12 through 15, calls were made on another long-distance
service provider, Telesphere Communications Inc. All but one of the
calls were placed from Brooklyn to overseas destinations.
       Security officials with AT&T said spreading the use of the card
number over several networks probably kept it in service for so
long, avoiding the normal alarms that are set off by unusual volumes
of calls by an AT&T customer.
       When Downey returned home on July 21, she was notified by
telephone company officials that the card number had become stolen
property and had been misused. The officials were alerted by a high
volume of long-distance calls on at least two days. AT&T took the
number out of service at midnight July 13, but calls continued for
two days on other carriers. Downey got a $3,500 telephone bill from
the telephone companies in early August, but the companies told her
the charges from the theft would be forgiven.
       The amount was particularly startling because she didn't use the
card after her one attempt to telephone her mother July 4.
       And even that call wasn't charged to her card. Unlike the thieves
who had her card number, she gave up and called collect.
       LAT-WP 09-01 2030EDT<

4213tm--f
u w bc-phones-help     09-01 0193
^bc-phones-help<
^(wap) (ATTN: National, Financial editors)<
^Ways to Safeguard Cards<
^By Cindy Skrzycki=
^(c) 1991, The Washington Post=
       In most cases, telephone fraud abuses can be detected with
computer software that monitors calling patterns and sudden
increases in usage. Carriers also can block outgoing calls to
international destinations if abuse is suspected.
       To fight the thieves, AT&T said it plans to use more random
credit card codes that do not include a customer's home phone number
or area code. This should make it harder for thieves to remember the
number.
       But security experts insist there is no system that will flag
every fraudulent call. Much of the responsibility for preventive
measures, they suggest, lies with the card holder.
       Phone companies recommend that customers never give out a calling
number. At public places, cards should be kept out of view.
       Other safeguards: Don't let anyone see you keying in your number
or overhear you giving it to an operator. If you move, have new
billing information changed immediately to your new address. Don't
use a telephone credit card as a form of identification.
       LAT-WP 09-01 2025EDT<

4212tm--f
u w bc-phones     09-01 1052
^bc-phones<
^(wap) (ATTN: National, Financial editors)<
^Phone Fraud Part of a Costly Growing Industry (Washn)<
^By Cindy Skrzycki=
^(c) 1991, The Washington Post=
       WASHINGTON _ Claire Lent, a retired government worker from
Arlington, Va., walked up to a pay phone in New York's Pennsylvania
Station last May to call home on her telephone credit card.
       Standing at a circular cluster of phones, she gave her card
number to an operator, who completed her call. Then she got on a
5:30 p.m. train to Washington.
       Lent didn't realize it, but a ``shoulder surfer'' _ someone who
eavesdrops to steal card numbers _ listened to her transaction with
the operator. By noon the next day, her card number had paid for
illegal calls to Ghana, Britain, Morocco, Chicago, Detroit, and St.
Paul and Duluth, Minn.
       The damage to her account for a day's worth of illegal calls:
$533.94, not counting hundreds of other calls that never showed up
on her bill. AT&T did not put through those calls after noticing
repeated attempts had been made to verify the access code.
       ``It was just such a shock,'' said Lent, whose typical monthly
phone bill includes long-distance charges of about $30.
       What happened to Lent is part of a growing underground industry
in the trafficking of stolen telephone credit cards and other kinds
of telecommunications fraud that now costs long-distance carriers
about $1.2 billion annually, up from $500 million in 1985.
       Charges to private individuals from telephone credit card fraud
almost always are forgiven. But the cost eventually is reflected in
the rates paid by consumers.
       The increasing boldness and sophistication of street criminals,
the savvy of computer hackers and the eagerness of recent immigrants
to make international calls cheaply are fueling the fraud, according
to the telephone companies, which are trying to devise ways to stem
the illegal practice.
       Alarmed at the ingenuity, reach and persistence of criminals who
commit all kinds of telecommunications fraud, long-distance carriers
such as American Telephone & Telegraph Co., MCI Communications Corp.
and US Sprint Communications Co. also have heightened warnings to
customers about how the scams work and how they can be avoided.
       The proliferation of telephone credit cards provides a fertile
field for fraud. According to credit card industry consultanting
firm, the Nilson Report, nearly 142.8 million telephone credit cards
in use in the United States, with $10.7 billion in calls charged to
the cards annually.
       The Nilson Report also said credit cards are being used more
often as the number of pay phones increases. Many new pay phones no
longer accept coins.
       Airports and railroad terminals in big cities offer rich
opportunities for the thieves. ``The compromise is in transportation
centers,'' said Richard Petillo, manager of corporate security for
AT&T.
       Cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago have become
centers for the theft, as shoulder surfers, sometimes equipped with
binoculars, watch and listen for unsuspecting callers to reveal
their credit card numbers, either verbally to an operator or by
dialing it into the system.
       The shoulder surfer turns over the numbers to resellers known as
``street scammers,'' who peddle the calls themselves or line up
customers for ``call-sell'' operators, who set up shop at pay phones.
       Most often, the stolen number is not given to customers. Instead,
the call-sell operator dials the number and charges $10 to $40 a
call for a predetermined amount of time, telephone security experts
said. Because so many calls are to international points, phone
companies believe many of the customers are recent immigrants
calling relatives in their native lands.
       ``They are, in effect, the local telephone company,'' Edward
O'Malley, vice president of systems integrity for MCI, said of the
thieves. ``These are very well-organized operators in call houses or
on street corners.''
       Phone companies also have warned customers about attempts by
thieves to obtain credit card numbers by posing as phone officials
investigating fraud. The callers ask customers for their credit card
numbers and say refusal to cooperate will be recorded and service
disconnected.
       Another way illegal numbers get into circulation is through
computer hackers who crack the remote access codes of corporate
voice-mail systems and 800 numbers. The hackers then have access to
the long-distance lines of a company's internal switchboard, called
a private branch exchange, or PBX.
       Once the code is on the street, often through computer bulletin
boards, call-sell operators again take over. The average lifetime of
a pirated PBX code often is longer than that of a credit card
because it can take up to a month before a company realizes it has a
problem.
       The issue of who should pay for corporate PBX fraud _ the
long-distance carrier, the manufacturer of the switchboard or the
company who owns it _ is being fought in the courts and at the
Federal Communications Commission.
       Mitsubishi International Corp., which was billed for thousands of
international calls after its PBX code was cracked by hackers, is
suing AT&T for $10 million, alleging that AT&T did not warn it that
the PBX was vulnerable to a break-in.
       In Lent's case, every illegal call on her card number originated
in New York. Lent remembered there ``were a couple young people
hanging around'' when she was placing her call with an AT&T credit
card.
       Once a card is compromised, the damage spreads quickly because
calls can go out almost simultaneously over several long-distance
networks.
       Thieves made long-distance calls over Sprint, MCI and Telesphere
Communications Inc. networks with Lent's card before it was taken
out of service the day after it was stolen.
       So far this year, there have been 85 arrests for telephone fraud,
said the Secret Service, which enforces laws against credit card
fraud.
       One of the more notorious cases was the Coconut Connection, a
sting the Secret Service operated out of Honolulu to put out of
business a call-sell operation that officials said was operating
nationwide and running up $125 million in fraudulent charges
annually.
       Dale Boll, Secret Service assistant special agent in charge of
the fraud division, said 20 people were arrested, 12 computer
systems were seized and 3,500 stolen access codes were recovered.
       The maximum penalty for illegally selling access to long-distance
networks is 10 years in jail and a $10,000 fine after $1,000 in
fraudulent charges.
       LAT-WP 09-01 2025EDT<


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