Threat Intelligence

Suspected hackers indicted by Russia for card skimming attacks

(“MasterCard credit card” by Håkan Dahlström is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)

Six Russian nationals suspected to be part of a hacking operation have been charged by the Russian Prosecutor General's Office for their involvement in card-skimming attacks that resulted in the theft of more than 160,000 payment cards over an almost seven-year period, BleepingComputer reports.

Malicious computer programs have been leveraged by suspects Alexander Aseev, Alexander Basov, Anton Tolmachev, Denis Priymachenko, Dmitry Kolpakov, and Vladislav Patyuk to infiltrate foreign online store websites and their databases, with malicious code then deployed to exfiltrate banking card details, since late 2017, alleged Russian authorities, who noted that data stolen by the threat actors were then peddled on dark web platforms. Sentencing for the charges, including malicious computer program development, use, and distribution, as well as illegal payment turnovers, will be decided by the Soviet District Court of Ryazan.

Meanwhile, digital payments and one-time private cards have been recommended to curb the risk of being impacted by card skimming attacks.

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