The underground world of credit card fraud (Episode one)

Look around, it is the 21^st century, the world has become a global village and time waits for no one anymore. One of the strongest indications of this is the fact that every nation on the surface of the earth is now connected to the internet and the main reason why the world has become so small and compact, is predicated on the rise and global acceptance of the phenomenon. Yes! The internet is a phenomenon!

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The internet as a tool is so powerful that it has enhanced communications across borders and as it stands now, it is safe to say that communicating with someone from thousands of miles away is now as simple as picking up a glass of milk from the fridge. From a simple voice call to emails, scanned documents, business transactions, social networking and even criminal activities etc. the internet is a big host.

 Our daily activities are being influenced greatly by the internet, but commerce/trade is one area that has received a major breakthrough. At this point, It worthy to note that the internet has diversified and also revolutionised the way business is carried out in the 21^st century and the result is, Mr X, located in a remote area in Morocco, can now purchase items from Japan, America, UK or any other place in the world. All Mr X needs is an internet enabled PC and a credit/debit card with money in it.

As a virtual environment that comprises everything present in the real world, the internet is home to the good, the bad and the ugly. Sadly, financial frauds/data breach on the internet has become a major setback and according to statistics; over 13.8 million consumers in America had their credit/debit cards breached in 2014, making up 47% of global incidents, followed by the UK, France, Australia, Canada and Germany.

Going forward, there are certain terms used by credit card fraudsters that readers should get conversant with;

i.                    CVV or CC – full credit card details including victims full name, credit card number, card expiry date, card owner’s address and phone number

ii.                   CVV2 – the three digits at the back of the card

iii.                 Fullz info – the full information of a victim, including full credit card details, SSN, Date of Birth, Drivers License, Mother’s maiden name and bank routing number etc.

iv.                Cardable sites: vulnerable websites where stolen credit cards are easily used to purchase items or services.

v.                 Bank Logins – Bank details used for online banking and money transfer e.g. user name, passwords etc

vi.                VPN – everyone knows VPN, they are used for cloaking IP

vii.              Drop – Someone that helps to receive items bought with stolen cards

viii.             Carding – the art of buying stuff online with stolen cards

ix.                Carding forums; online meeting place where hackers, buyers, vendors and newbies meet.

x.                 Noobs – someone that is new in the business

xi.                RDA – used by hackers to remotely log into a victim’s computer

xii.              MIRC – a relay chat where the biggest and brightest hackers meet on the internet.

xiii.             Deep Web: This is hell fire. This is home to every illicit trade imaginable. This is where you can do anything on the internet without any fear of being traced! The deep web is completely anonymous!

xiv.           Vendor: He buys from the hacker and resells

xv.             Spamming: sending random messages to prospective victims

xvi.           Fake Login Page: Used by hackers to steal victims data

 There are basically two types of credit card fraudsters out there and they are the hacker/vendor and the buyer. The hacker is basically the tech guy, the geek, the eastern European from Russia, Ukraine or the North African from Egypt, Tunisia or Morocco. Other countries with a rich pool of hackers are Vietnam, India, America and the UK. While on the side, we have the buyers who basically are from everywhere on earth. A buyer can be anyone that has knowledge of the underground trade, meaning anyone that knows where to look, can easily buy stolen credit card details online.

 Hackers are those intelligent guys with impressive degrees in computer science and most times in carding forums, they brag about being too big to earn minimum wages and that’s why they choose to compromise peoples’ data online and do what?? Sell!

Hackers do not need or make use of 98% of the information they hack, however, they hack!

Down in the chain is the guy called the vendor! The vendor is the guy with plugs and connections, he knows a couple of good hackers capable of compromising website data-bases consistently and his duty is to buy from them! Why?? To resell!

Before we go any further, keep this in mind, hackers also develop and sell software used by non-hackers i.e. buyers to compromise victims, through spamming.

Now further down the line is the consumer or the buyer! The buyer can be anyone and 90% of the time, the buyer has no personal contact with the hacker. However, he buys whatever he needs from the vendor. And whatever he needs could be credit card details, bank logins, PayPal accounts, fake login page, emails and passwords, paid accounts, RDP and VPN etc. The list is long!

Vendors used to and still advertise their services in forums like www.kurupt.ru, www.l33t.org, www.altenen.com (the most popular one right now) and countless others. These places are called carding forums and they a gathering of like minds i.e. people interested in ripping off others online. www.altenen.com is a classic example of a proper carding forum and I say so because the site is visited by thousands daily. Not just that, the hackers here are so skilled and generous that they give away free hacked credit card details (called freebies) to noobs (newbies in the business). The downside of this is that over 700 persons can get hold of the same card details at once and the fastest to use it, is the winner. If a victim’s card is posted on a free forum, it takes a maximum of 10 minutes for it to be used up and dry.

Vendors, who have bought their cards privately from hackers, advertise their services in these forums and get tons of orders from buyers. A card bought from a vendor is called a private card and mind you the cheapest cards are those emanating from America. The prices are;

US visa $4

US MasterCard $4.5 - $5

Amex -$5

UK cards $10- $12

France $10-$15

Canada $7-$10

 And so on.

As a result of the constant need for compromised information, vendors are physically over-worked due to tons of orders from buyers! So what do they do? They create what is now called an online CVV SHOP! Examples are; www.cardershop.su, www.privatecc.co and www.kingscard.su.

There are thousands of CVV shops on the internet selling compromised information and like I said earlier, anyone can be a buyer if he/she knows where to look. A simple search on google using the keywords ‘cvv shop’ will show you just how close these things are to everyone.

NOTE: This is just a tip of the iceberg: in the episode two of this topic, I’ll talk about Mirc, Deep Web, Cardable sites, Carding with stolen cards, protecting yourself from hackers and also ways of preventing your personal data from being compromised.

        

Tobacco Smoking; Do you want to be a casualty?

Most historians that have researched into the past to ascertain the history of smoking have reached a consensus that smoking as an act started around 5000 BC in the form of incense burning and was initially used as a ritual process by the ancient Shaman civilization in present day central  America.

ancient smokers

Traditionally, local Shamans who invented smoking, indulged in the act in other to subdue their physical senses, in a quest to attain a  trance-state to communicate with their gods and ancestors, while civilizations like the Persians, Ethiopians and Indians smoked substances including cannabis, fish offal, clarified butter, and dried snake skin etc. for pleasure and social purposes.

Tobacco, initially referred to as ‘golden weed’  was first grown commercially in Jamestown, Virginia by John Rolfe in 1612 and the product which was  locally endorsed and nationally accepted, continued to spread across the world and has now become a global phenomenon today..

The practice is now a norm for most societies spread across all continents and as a result, in every human settlement on the planet today, cigarettes and smokers are present.

According to W.H.O statistics, in 2010, more than 1.2 billion people were indulged in the act of tobacco smoking, with over 5 million dying annually and 70% of the deaths occurring in developing countries.

tobacco smokers are liable to die young

Why are they dying?

In the late 1920s, a group of German scientists became the first to discover a link between tobacco smoking and lungs cancer and this singular discovery led to the maiden anti-smoking campaign in the world.

Today, cigarette smoking has been identified as the number one cause of preventable deaths on the planet and it is so because it results to a plethora of diseases that affect the lungs and the heart. Tobacco smoking triggers strokes, heart attacks, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases and several types of cancer.

The centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) USA stated that tobacco use amounts to a huge number of premature deaths globally and that although 70% of smokers declare their intention to quit, only about 2%-3% successfully do so.

third world smokers

So what about all the anti-smoking campaigns going on everywhere?

In the developed world, years of enlightenment and anti-smoking campaigns have started to bear dividends and as illustrated by the CDC, tobacco use amongst  adults in America declined from 42% to 20.8% between 1965- 2006. Other industrialized nations have also recorded a decline in the trend but sadly for developing countries, tobacco smoking seems to be on the rise and based on permutations, 70% of the estimated 10 million annual tobacco-related deaths will occur in these countries by 2025. There is a steady 3.8% rise in tobacco smoking in developing countries and that is why Judith Mackay at Edinburgh University posited that ‘Compared with developed countries, more men and fewer women currently smoke in developing countries, but smoking among girls and women is increasing.’

NO to smoking

 What is the way forward?

It is very clear from the above that the developed world is slowly but steadily winning the war against tobacco use, while the developing world has become a hotspot for tobacco use and substance abuse.

One of the reasons for the spike in tobacco use in developing countries, according to Judith Mackay is the fact that multinational tobacco companies have moved their attention away from the developed world and now fully focused on establishing a solid market in developing countries. This shift in focus with regards to the tobacco companies is as a result of the structures and platforms that have been put in place to help discourage current and potential smokers in the developed world.

Although local tobacco companies exist in developing countries, Judith Mackay advised governments in these countries to focus their efforts on building structures and platforms, as well as educating their population on the social, economical and health dangers of tobacco smoking, as has been the case in the developed world for decades. One major downside is the fact that these companies use world class marketing strategies that are unmatched locally in most developing countries.

Cigarette smoking is not just a public health concern, socially, it also constitutes public nuisance and on the long run, it is highly beneficial for smokers to quit and lead a clean, healthy life.

smoking is addictive

Wow! I find it very difficult to quit smoking and even the USA CDC says that only 2%-3% of smokers that declare their intention to quit successfully do so. So how do I quit?

When tobacco was first introduced to France, it was done by a Frenchman named Jean Nicot in 1560 and the stimulant present in tobacco called nicotine was named after him.

Scientists believe that every stick of cigarette comes with an equal amount of nicotine that lasts in the bloodstream for 7-8 hours and nicotine is basically the substance that fuels human craving and addiction.

What this means is, any smoker that aims to quit smoking, daily flushing out of nicotine is the way to go!

Now, how do I flush out nicotine from my system so that I can reduce the cravings and finally stop smoking, to lead a healthy life?

The analogy is simple and straightforward! The key to staying off cigarettes is flushing out nicotine and below are three super foods that can help you in doing that;

orange

·         Oranges; Oranges contain Vitamin C, which helps to flush out nicotine from the body speedily and also aid metabolism. Smokers, who are on their way to quitting, are advised to consume lots of oranges.

spinach

·         Spinach; while oranges help in the flushing out of nicotine, this green leaf helps to replenish depleted folic acids and dead cells that have been left redundant by smoking. In other words, spinach is rich in folic acids.

broccoli

·         Broccoli; Smoking depletes Vitamin C and Vitamin B5 and this is what results to the damage in human lungs. Broccoli is a vegetable rich in both minerals and as such, it helps protect the lungs from further damage.

Nicotine is eliminated from the body as urine and that is one of the reasons why smokers should drink lots of water. Water also helps to keep the body hydrated and the skin in good condition.

cos im happy..........

So far so good and at this point, every smoker that is on his way to quitting, should see this as a valid support and is advised to make use of the recommendations as stated above.

Like it is said in Nigeria; the federal ministry of health warns that smokers are liable to die young.

Quit smoking and live a healthy, long and fruitful life.

Long live mankind

Henry Goin

 

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