Liberal Hackers at it Again

""Wikileaks" explained in an earlier email that it was making public the information on Coleman's donors, including their credit card numbers, because of the "Coleman campaign's effort to impugn the election processes in the State of Minnesota." As a result of Wikileak's mass email of a spread sheet containing credit card information for thousands of Coleman donors, the Coleman campaign sent an email to its supporters today suggesting that they cancel their credit cards."

I am saying that it does not have to be “some evil force” that was POLITICALLY inspired. There are people that do this because they are trolling for credit card numbers and other financial information. They use computer sniffer programs that employ bot-netted computer systems linked (unbeknownst to the owners) all over the world.

They do it for money. They don’t care who you are, or who you vote for, just that you have exploitable financial data. There are huge rings of these fraudsters all over the world, sniffing numbers and selling them for as little as 10 cents a card. It’s major business. That’s why we receive all these instructions on how to keep our financial data safe over the web.

I read one analogy that explained that Coleman’s team did the equivalent of leaving the financial data in a box on their front sidewalk. Is it theft if someone walks off with the box or the stuff without asking you? Well it’s not being “hacked” if you leave the info on open directories on the internet.

Is it “intimidation” if someone calls you to say they found your wallet in the street, or your checkbook? That’s what these Wikileaks guys did with their emails - how is it intimidating? For what nefarious end? It’s not like anybody at Wikileaks took the info and made similar donations to Franken. The only people who might be scared would be the Coleman financial directors, who can get into major trouble because they had a legal obligation to inform the donors that their credit card data had been compromised, and the financial/IT team didn’t inform them.

The evidence all points to unsecured data being obtained by thieves openly. There was no political or ideological reason behind it. Your fear is correct but misplaced. The evil people to be scared of are the loose association of thieves selling collecting and selling long lists of financial data, usually from bases in Eastern Europe and Asia.

Google “credit card fraud rings” if you need more info, or if you need to feel nervous about shopping online.

My stance would be this: I ran some malware/spyware reports that you show you've been infected with the Zotob [example] worm, which has been identified as being used by thieves based in Turkey who run a large credit-card fraud ring.

I'd advise you to do a complete reload, since this worm burrows into your registry and distributes bits of itself to random files all over your computer. Zotob doesn't just sit in one neat identifiable program in your program files; it distributes itself so you can't get rid of it easily.

And I'd advise you to immediately inform your credit card company, so you won't be responsible for any unauthorized charges and it can be canceled.

Yes. Any private information, once compromised, can very well be in the public domain. You have to assume that. That is why you should never put embarrassing information in an open directory.

And NEVER email anyone any naked photos, no matter how nice they seem online (hehe, I had a customer do that once. Oops.)

And your computer tech hopefully would tell you the same thing.

Kinda' like flashing a wallet full of $100's in a seedy bar.

Or handing your credit card to anybody in any store or restaurant, or giving it over the phone to some anonymous customer service rep. Either way it can be stolen by whoever hears or sees it. Or when the database of numbers is compromised, as in this case. But that has nothing to do with how the legitimate transactions on the card were processed. It's all about the seller (or campaign) failing to protect the information. How do you even know that these credit card numbers were obtained from of on-line transactions? Many could have been over the phone.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.