Five charged as Feds bust largest credit-card hack in history

Federal prosecutors in New Jersey say they've busted what could be the biggest credit card hacking fraud in US history, with companies such as NASDAQ, 7-Eleven, and Dow Jones falling prey to an Eastern European criminal gang. According to the indictment, the gang stole data on up to 160 million credit cards and then sold them …

[Shannon Jacobs]

Linkage to spam?

I'd like to know about the linkages to the spammers. Yes, many of the spammers do seem to be minor-league nuisances, though they are much more visible in our lives, but I'm curious about such factors as (1) How many major criminals started as spammers? (2) How much cover do the big-league criminals get from the massive noise of the spam? (3) How much of the spammer infrastructure is shared with the big-league criminals?

In short, I do regard these guys as smarter than the average spammer, but about the same level of evil.

Speaking of EVIL that reminds me of the new spammer-friendly policies of the google and Yahoo. Anyone want to report on recent changes in Microsoft's email systems? I'm not using them these days because of their excessive spammer friendliness in the past (and even though Microsoft has done some good work against spammers upstream--I'm still on the downstream end).

[Big-nosed Pengie]

these types of frauds increase the costs of doing business for every American consumer

Only to American consumers. The rest of us don't need to worry then.

[John Smith 19]

And yet the NSA never even noticed?

Remind me again of what it's supposed to be doing?

[lurker]

Re: And yet the NSA never even noticed?

Not this, unless the data in question was slurped from government systems.

[Bernt Oestergaard]

Valuable Europeans?

Yes, you have to wonder why the European cards are 5x the US ones. The simple answer is the European use of chip bank cards, which US banks are reluctant to issue to their customers due to the additional manufacturing cost - they seem to prefer their customers being ripped off because of lousy magnetic card security. How long will the US consumers accept this logic that is costing them a fortune?? Paris because she probably has a US bank card as well, but can afford the losses

[kain preacher]

Re: Valuable Europeans?

Right now three are 4 copies that do chip and In the US. In the last six months I've noticed that major retails in the US have readers that do chip and pin.