14 DAY TRIAL // RBS WorldPay announced in December that a security breach on its network might have compromised the personal information of 1.5 million credit card holders. The company noted at the time that around 100 cards had already been misused by unidentified cyber criminals. However, what it didn't say was that the fraud amounted to a whooping $9 million.
RBS WorldPay is a service operated by the Royal Bank of Scotland, which offers payment processing solutions that cover credit, debit, Electronic Bank Transfers, gift cards, customer loyalty cards, checks, ATM, and tailored solutions for retail, restaurant, petroleum, convenience stores, grocery, hospitality, transport, as well as cardholders not present in these sectors.
The company announced that, during November, an unauthorized party obtained access to its network, through which sensitive card information was being transmitted. According to Fox 5, which launched a journalistic investigation into the matter, RBS somewhat downplayed the severity of the incident by mentioning only the disabling of 100 cards that were used for the fraud.
Fox 5 quoted sources participating in the investigation launched by the FBI. According to them this was a wide scale, highly complex credit card fraud scheme, which spanned all continents. Therefore, after stealing the credit card details, the hacker, or the gang of hackers, created clones and distributed them around the world. Most likely, the card cloning was done by local cyber criminal rings in every country.
Cashers, also called "mules" on the underground market, were then hired to withdraw money, using the cloned cards, from ATM machines around the globe at virtually the same time. "Over 130 different ATM machines in 49 cities worldwide were accessed in a 30-minute period on November 8. So you can get an idea of the number of people involved in this and the scope of the operation," FBI Agent Ross Rice commented for Fox 5.
The cities where ATMs were hit included Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Montreal, Moscow and Hong Kong. The authorities said that they had never witnessed a fraud on such a large scale or so well coordinated. "The number of machines that were accessed, the number of cities that were targeted, and the number of people that had to be involved in this is quite significant," Agent Rice noted.
The intriguing facts about this scheme don't end here, as RBS WorldPay was right and only around 100 cards were misused. So, how is it possible for $9 million to be siphoned from such a small number of cards? Well, it seems like the hacker, or hackers, were also able to mess with the normal limits imposed on the cards, allowing cashers to perform multiple withdrawals in a short amount of time.
The FBI is hoping to get some leads after arresting several of the cashers captured by ATM cameras. Since they were probably hired for small sums of money and have no allegiance to the people behind the whole operation, they are more likely to rat on anything they know.
A very similar security breach involving credit card details occurred more recently at the 6th largest payment processor in the U.S., Heartland Payment Systems. The company said it discovered data stealing malware on its network during a security audit ordered after MasterCard and Visa notified it of fraudulent activity on some of the cards they processed. Could the same gang be behind this incident too? We hope not.