Credit danger as 3D printers make black market cards

If it wasn’t bad enough that hackers were after your identity, now you have to worry about your credit card being listed and sold online, as Dell’s security group warns.

The web isn’t always a nice place, and some people are actively out there to make your life a bit of a nightmare.

That’s the general feeling coming in from Dell’s SecureWorks security solution, anyway, as it releases the latest information on “hacker markets”.

It might sound like something out of a movie, but the report on underground hacker markets details current trends in the price of security information, with Dell revealing that prices of credit cards from Australia are going up, while stolen bank account details are also going up.

As such, the price for stolen Visa and MasterCard credit cards originating in Australia have gone up by between three and five times, hitting prices of between $25 and $35 depending on the type of account being offers, while hackers are also being employed to break into social media accounts.

“While much of the cybercrime hitting organisations throughout the world is the result of cooperation by hackers working outside the confines of publicly accessible marketplaces, these underground forums provide a small window into the world cybercriminals occupy,” said a spokesperson for Dell SecureWorks, who also told GadgetGuy that the reason this report was compiled was to find if any trends had emerged.

credit-card-keyboard

Unfortunately, these trends point to more credit card details being out there thanks to 3D printers and the ease of which they enable scammers to build card skimming devices.

Getting around these issues can be difficult, particularly since card skimmers are often designed to be attached to an ATM, and can be disguised to look like they are part of the machine.

With that said, Dell SecureWorks suggests to be “extra caution when withdrawing money” from any ATM.

“Cover the keypad with your other hand when entering a PIN,” said the same spokesperson, who also advised that it was crucial to check bank and credit card statements regularly for any signs of fraudulent activity.

Covering the keypad is an old trick and stems from the idea that most skimmers also operate near a camera monitoring your fingers. Once the skimmer has the details, it also needs your PIN, and so the camera captures this, but by covering the numbers, you will block the camera from doing its thing.

Online banking plays a part in details, too, so SecureWorks has suggested the typical assortment of security software, going so far as to suggest avoiding trial security products.

“Trial versions of anti-virus products are good for testing products, but do not continue to use the trial version as your protection for your home or work PC,” a spokesperson for SecureWorks said.

“The danger is that the trial version does not receive any updates, so any new trojan or virus that is introduced after the trial version was released will have total access to your PC.”

There you have it, folks: while a trial security app is useful to try out, making sure to have the real thing — an up-to-date real thing at that — is critical, so factor that into the things you need to have.