Id Theft Alerts


August 19, 2009
Man Indicted for Stealing 130 Million Credit Cards

Albert Gonzalez, 28, of Miami has been indicted for stealing 130 million credit and debit card numbers.  These are not new incidents but were at Heartland Payment Systems and retailers like OfficeMax Barnes & Noble and TJ Maxx that we have reported on in the past. 

Although this has been touted as identity theft, it is actually just credit card theft.  A crime that is easier for the victims to identify and stop.

One surprising revelation is that Gonzales was paid by the secret service to track down hackers.

So how did Gonzalez break into so many networks?  He would target WiFi networks with poor security.  Once in the network he would use SQL injection attacks on locked servers.  This is a common attack used by hackers.
Network Solutions Hacked

Network solutions has announced a hacker had access to 573,000 debit and credit card accounts.  Network Solutions provides web hosting and e-commerce solutions to 4,343 online retailers.  Most of these were small mom and pop stores.  [full story]
Identity Theft Starts with Paper

The search for identity thieves usually ends with a hotel room or house cluttered with forged documents, printers and stolen documents.  Two sources popular for stolen information are the dumpsters behind doctor's offices and real estate offices.  They have a wealth of personal information and often fail to shred it first.  It is these thousands of small identity theft rings that don't make the news but more than equal the few large scale thefts like the ones above. [full story]
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