Largest Identity Theft Ring in History Indicted

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Allegedly, the group is responsible for stealing and selling more than 40 million credit and debit card numbers. The credit and debit card numbers were intercepted electronically at nine retailers, who transmitted their unprotected financial information using wireless networks. Once they hacked into the wireless networks, the group would install sniffer packets to capture card numbers and PIN numbers.

TJX, who was severely criticized for their breach of approximately 8.5 million records wasn't the only retailer being compromised. BJ’s Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, Forever 21 and DSW were being compromised, also. The restaurant chain Dave and Busters was also compromised by having "sniffer packets" installed on their point of sale terminals by the group.

Merchants have been under fire for not meeting PCI data security standards, which were developed by the payment card industry to protect systems against compromises. The National Retail Federation has fired back at the payment card industry for forcing merchants to store sensitive information, which can easily be stolen. In a recent data breach involving the theft of 4.2 million card numbers, Hannaford Brothers had been certified as being PCI compliant, which led a lot people to speculate that PCI data security standards might be outdated, themselves.

Sniffer packets are used to monitor information in a network and can be used to gather a lot of sensitive information. Detecting a sniffer packet on a wireless network is known to be extremely difficult. A practice known as "wardriving" is when people drive around and try to pick up wireless signals from unprotected networks. Computer security experts highly recommend making wireless networks secure, including those of the home variety, by password protecting them. Software to assist people, who do this, is freely available on the Internet.

Article Author: Ed Dickson

Having worked around financial crimes for a number of years, I noticed they seemed to be on the rise. One reason for this is technology, which grows more rapidly than laws designed to protect us from it. …

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