PIN numbers at risk from ‘cashing out’ cybercriminals

Fraud experts have said that 2008 will be remembered as the year cybercriminals not only perfected their identity-stealing techniques, but also their bank robbing skills.

This is according to RSA’s Online Fraud Benchmark Report, which claims that more fraudsters were able to cash-out using stolen credentials at unprecedented speeds using sophisticated PIN stealing attacks.

RSA highlighted the RBS Worldpay incident, where that firm's debit card payroll system hosting a million personal records was allegedly hacked.

According to reports, $9 million was netted by cloning cards in 49 countries across the world and stealing from cash machines.

This matches findings in a recent Verizon Data Breach report which said the big money was now in stealing PIN numbers together with associated credit and debit accounts.

It said: “These PIN-based attacks hit the consumer much harder than typical signature-based counterfeit attacks. This is because PIN fraud typically leads to cash being withdrawn directly from the consumer’s account."

It added: “Furthermore, PIN fraud typically places a larger share of the burden upon the consumer to prove that transactions are fraudulent.”

The high value of PIN numbers was also spawning innovations in attack strategies, such as memory-scraping malware and other complex and cutting-edge techniques.

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