One of the most widespread forms of theft – because it is considered simple, silent and low risk – involves credit cards in their digital form. A recent investigation revealed a database of more than 6 million stolen plastic items circulating on the dark web, of which 17,000 belong to Argentines.
In addition, two out of three cards (62%) were compromised with at least some type of private information, such as an email address, phone number, email address, or even a social security number, according to NordVPN, a firm specializing in cybersecurity. .
A large part of the included information is equivalent in the field of cybercriminals: the verification number (or CVV) and the date of issuance of the card.
“But this research that has now come to light is the tip of the iceberg.
Information about the papers of Argentina. NordVPN source.
The exact total is 16,792 cards for Argentina, which makes it the 17th most affected figure in the entire world. The researchers estimated that the average price of these cards on the dark web is 544 pesos, three times less than the world average, which reaches 1,560 pesos.
For this reason, alone, in a market that is growing exponentially, Argentina has a low attack coefficient (barely 0.3%) according to the index of fraud risk prepared by NordVPN.
In a more detailed analysis, it was revealed that 3,000 of those cards included the address of the Argentine owners, 2,000 had a telephone number, 1,500 had email addresses and about 70, the date of birth of their owners.
“However, in the investigation, most of the papers were found to be sold with the e-mail addresses and home addresses of the victims, which is impossible to achieve with violent technical force. Therefore, we can conclude that the users were stolen using more sophisticated methods, such as hacks and malware, says Warmenhoven.
How the room cards are distributed. NordVPN source.
The problem behind this global breach, which exposes data with such precision, as well as your addresses and other personal information, can lead to identity theft.
Once the attacker has obtained the victim’s name, ID, and email address, they can also use legal methods to obtain more personal information and loan money that was never used in their name and loan money.
Almost 3 million (58.1%) of the stolen accounts that were analyzed originated from the United States. However, the index puts the ranking at risk of fifth, after Malta, Australia, New Zealand and Slovenia. Argentina ranked 25th.
While Russia had the lowest risk score, and China ranked third from the bottom. These results seem to strengthen the prevailing hypotheses about the localization of large-scale hacking operations and the deliberate selection of Anglo-European countries as targets.
Credit card: how to avoid data theft?
Although the data often comes from e-commerce sites that are suspected by attackers, a problem that escapes anyone affected, NordVPN experts offer tips to avoid the worst.
