Stolen credit card portal uncovered

Security experts have discovered an underground exchange promoting the sale of fraudulent credit card data with guarantees and volume discounts for large-scale fraudsters..

The SellCVV2 site appears to use Google's Blogspot service as its host and is typical of a number of portals promoting the exchange of fraudulent card data, according to security firm Finjan.

Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer at Finjan, noted that the SellCVV2 site has a high level of commercialisation of the traders involved.

"Prices are segmented depending on whether a card is a Classic Visa or MasterCard, a premium account such as a Gold, Platinum or Business/Corporate card and its country of issue," he said.

"Prices typically range from $38 per set of card data for premium card accounts in small volumes, going down to $10 for Classic card data in volumes of 100 or more.

"Customers are also being offered a trial set of data, as well as a guarantee on account details that do not work."

Ben-Itzhak believes that the offer of trial card data, guarantees and volume discounts is symptomatic of the organised criminals who are probably behind this and other sites that Finjan's research team has discovered.

"If further proof were needed that there is a very serious problem facing the card acceptance and processing industry, this is it," he said.

"The level of sophistication shown on the site acts as a clear warning to anyone who thinks that card fraud is a containable problem."