Cybercrime websites that sell stolen credit and debit card account numbers have been doing their own Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions, according to security researcher Brian Krebs.
The thieves are slashing prices and promoting holiday sales as fraudsters gear up for the busy holiday shopping season. Deals at “carder” sites range from deep discounts to charity appeals.
For example, one carder site claims that 5 percent of sales will go to the fund to help the family of Michael Brown. Another is offering a 20 percent discount, but only for sales that use the promo code “Black Friday.” Yet another carder site offers 35 percent off for the entire four-day Black-Friday-through-Cyber-Monday extended weekend.
Some of the cybercrime sites even have money-back offers for cases where a retailer, banks or a card brand discovers the card theft so the numbers are no longer valid, Krebs reported.
Stolen card data is sold either in the form of complete payment-card tracks — which can be used by crooks to encode the numbers onto new plastic cards and then go shopping for high-priced electronics and gift cards at big box stores — or just as card numbers, expiration dates and card security codes, which can only be used to shop at online retailers.
