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Internet Fraud: Pinoy Style What if someone stole your identity and used it to ruin you? Sounds like fiction, right? WRONG! This kind of scenario has become a reality thanks to the Internet. Scrupulous persons can now take, let’s say your credit card information and buy things online or even send themselves money and charge it to poor little you. We may hear of these things a lot in the news and usually the victims are citizens of first world countries. But do you know who could the “hackers” be? Make a wild guess. Last week I was able to meet up with a group that I will call “X”. This group is entirely made up of Filipinos (If you guessed it right then give yourself a pat in the back) and what they do is they steal other people’s credit card information and use it to purchase tons (no exaggeration here) of stuff on the net and sometimes if they are low on dough they send themselves money. Nice racket, I must say. The group is made up of 5 people who met each other in the Net. 3 of them are guys and the two are yes, girls. All of the members were highly skilled in using the computer as a hacking tool. I hanged out with the group the whole day and was fortunate enough to see them in action. It was 3 o’clock in the afternoon when the group decided to commence operations. We went to an Internet Café that has DSL Internet connection (according to them the broadband connection makes it easier and faster). Each member rented a station and then the hacking began. The guys popped in a CD and installed several obscure programs. According to Max (not his real name), one of the programs they installed is used for finding a backdoor, while the other programs are for denial of service purposes. While the guys are busy with their programs the girls were just using plain old Internet Explorer and Telnet for the heist. I asked Alex (again, not her real name) what exactly is she doing. She told me that recently they found out that there has been a new exploit for a shopping cart system that has been discovered. This exploit will allow the hacker to gain access to the credit card database of the website and practically download it and that is exactly what the two girls did. The moment the two of them has finished typing some obscure characters in the browser and unknown commands in Telnet, a very long page appeared on the browser. This particular page may appear to be just plain rubbish at first sight but if you will look at it closely, you will see that it contains the vital credit card information that these guys wanted. The girls immediately saved the info and informed the guys that they are done. The guys are still bashing at their keyboards while the girls strutted their way towards the counter. I wanted to talk to Max again but opted not to because he seems so serious with the keyboard bashing that he was doing. After 30 minutes the guys called the girls again and said: Let’s go shopping! With the credit card details that they have each of them popped out a long list of what they call “cardable” websites. Chino (not his real name), explained to me that when they call a website cardable it means that the site ships to the Philippines and doesn’t really do phone verifications all the time. Each of them went to several websites and purchased everything they fancied. They told me though that they couldn’t really card big items like laptops and digicams all the time. Those stuff according to them are way too expensive that the sales department of the website has to do a phone verification for the order. “You can get those stuff from eBay though. Mas mahirap nga lang pero it’s doable.” Max told me. That afternoon the guys “carded” everything from Nike shoes to Coach bags and one of them even sent himself money via a money transfer website. After “shopping” the gang logged out and went to the nearest Starbucks in the area. During our stay at Starbucks I asked them what would happen next. Dina (not her real name) told me that they would wait for the confirmation email from the website they just “carded” and once they get that they’ll just wait for the delivery guy to knock at their doors. “Can’t they trace you? I mean you just gave your address, right?” I asked. “Well, they can trace us but so far no police has knocked at our doors yet” Max answered. “We don’t use our own address all the time. Most of the time we ask a friend or whoever that we know if we can use their address instead. Of course, we don’t tell them that we’re going to use it for a heist. We just practically make up excuses.” Dina added. Our conversation lasted for another hour then we shook hands and then parted ways. Cyber Fraud is one of the biggest problems that the Internet has brought upon its users. I see it as a trade off for the convenience it provided. A lot of things have been done to at least minimize it but still the problem persists. I am pretty sure that for every new encryption technology that comes out a new cracking tool will be right behind it to make it utterly useless and I am pretty sure that Max’s gang will be one of them. I always admired the growth of IT here in the Philippines. Imagine a third world country being the best and actually screwing the makers of a technology which originated from a first world country. This is irony at its best. Article written by: Park Quilling  Recommend this article to a friend! Have a comment on this article? Send it
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