An underground economy that centres around the selling of identities and personal information is thriving, according to a report.
Coordinated criminal gangs working online are able to steal credit card numbers and verification codes, bank account details and PayPal accounts to sell on.
A credit card issued by a bank in the US, for example, can sell for as little as $1, whereas a list of 29,000 active email addresses can be bought by spammers for just $5.
Lee Sharrocks of Symantec said: "The criminal fraternity has recognised that there's significant profit to be made by turning their attentions online and is constantly evolving its techniques in an effort to outwit businesses and consumers.?
The research from Symantec also revealed that criminal gangs are much more likely to single out home users than businesses and other large organisations, with 93 per cent of attacks targeted specifically at individuals.
?Cybercriminals are using an increasingly sophisticated array of techniques to steal confidential information," said Sharrocks.
One of the most common ways for criminal gangs to steal information was by installing spyware programs that can make a record of the keys pressed by a user. These 'keylogger' programs made up 79 percent of confidential information threats in the second half of 2006, according to Symantec.
http://www.symantec.com/
Topic: Online ID trade thriving (Read 593 times)