Cybercriminals Target Unemployed To Launder Money

[Peaches]

Cybercriminals Target Unemployed To Launder Money

Scams promising work-at-home opportunities disguise money mule operations to translate the glut of stolen identities into cash, says Cisco's annual security report.

By Mathew J. Schwartz , InformationWeek

What's in store for information security attacks this year? Expect more viruses, malware, spam, and phishing attacks, of course. But in a twist, also expect cybercriminals to devote more time and energy to translating stolen financial information into cash.

The problem for today's online criminals is that they have many more stolen account credentials than they can translate into profit. "Currently, the ratio of stolen account credentials to available mule capacity could be as high as 10,000 to 1," said Cisco senior security researcher Mary Landesman. On forums devoted to selling such information, "there's such a glut of stolen credit cards that they don't even fetch that much."

The barrier is simple: "cash-out" operations are labor-intensive and risky, and may result in arrest. To lower the risk to themselves, cybercriminals often farm out this part to money mules -- teams of criminals who use fake ATM or credit cards loaded with stolen account credentials. Money mules typically withdraw money from a different country than the one in which the target account is located, and outside the other country's banking hours. Criminals' goal is to maximize their haul before financial service organization's fraud departments get suspicious, block withdrawals, or alert law enforcement.

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