gift card fraud

December 19, 2017

Buyers Beware of Tampered Gift Cards

This post was originally published on this sitePrepaid gift cards make popular presents and no-brainer stocking stuffers, but before you purchase one be on the lookout for signs that someone may have tampered with it. A perennial scam that picks up around the holidays involves thieves who pull back and then replace the decals that obscure the card’s redemption code, allowing them to redeem or transfer the card’s balance online after the card is purchased by an unwitting customer. Last week KrebsOnSecurity heard from Colorado reader Flint Gatrell, who reached out after finding that a bunch of Sam’s Club gift […]
May 14, 2018

Detecting Cloned Cards at the ATM, Register

This post was originally published on this siteMuch of the fraud involving counterfeit credit, ATM debit and retail gift cards relies on the ability of thieves to use cheap, widely available hardware to encode stolen data onto any card’s magnetic stripe. But new research suggests retailers and ATM operators could reliably detect counterfeit cards using a simple technology that flags cards which appear to have been altered by such tools. A gift card purchased at retail with an unmasked PIN hidden behind a paper sleeve. Such PINs can be easily copied by an adversary, who waits until the card is […]
June 27, 2019

Breach at Cloud Solution Provider PCM Inc.

This post was originally published on this siteA digital intrusion at PCM Inc., a major U.S.-based cloud solution provider, allowed hackers to access email and file sharing systems for some of the company’s clients, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. El Segundo, Calif. based PCM [NASDAQ:PCMI] is a provider of technology products, services and solutions to businesses as well as state and federal governments. PCM has nearly 4,000 employees, more than 2,000 customers, and generated approximately $2.2 billion in revenue in 2018. Sources say PCM discovered the intrusion in mid-May 2019. Those sources say the attackers stole administrative credentials that PCM uses to manage client accounts […]
September 2, 2021

Gift Card Gang Extracts Cash From 100k Inboxes Daily

This post was originally published on this siteSome of the most successful and lucrative online scams employ a “low-and-slow” approach — avoiding detection or interference from researchers and law enforcement agencies by stealing small bits of cash from many people over an extended period. Here’s the story of a cybercrime group that compromises up to 100,000 email inboxes per day, and apparently does little else with this access except siphon gift card and customer loyalty program data that can be resold online. The data in this story come from a trusted source in the security industry who has visibility into a […]