Cyber burglar steals 485,000 credit card numbers

[stu <lsi@space.net.au>]

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I've just finished reading Richard Stallman's GNU stuff, and my only 
comment on the article below is "who is the hacker?"

I mean, Stallman says a hacker is "someone who likes to program 
and who likes being clever about it".  So... would it be the Secret 
Service, who seem to have been quite clever about their program of 
misappropriating the truth... or was it the banks that did that?

When CD Universe was done we knew about it in a week, and "the 
company was working with financial institutions" to notify 
customers.  Why didn't that happen here?  It wouldn't be because 
the govt was the hacker???  Never.  I mean, if that were the case, 
they would attack other things like the Australian Stock Exchange. 
 Oh -- the US DOD ***did*** attack the ASX.

PS: will I be executed if I post decss and cphack on my UK or Oz 
websites, I am located in Australia and I have citizenship of both 
countries but I am not American or in America.

---

Cyber burglar steals 485,000 credit card numbers
 The Australian, Tuesday March 21, 2000, page 1

 by "a correspondent in New York", DPA

In the largest-known case of cyber theft, a hacker stole 485,000
credit card numbers from an e-commerce site and then secretly
stored the information on a US government agency's website.

Credit card companies notified financial institutions, but
many of the compromised accounts remain open because the 
banks
neither closed them nor notified customers of the theft,
MSNBC television reported.

The theft occurred in January 1999, but few details had
previously been made public.

The scope of the crime emerged in a letter, dated December 27,
from Visa to member financial institutions.

Jim Macken, a Secret Service spokesman, confirmed the incident
had occurred and added some details on an interview on US 
television.

The Visa letter, a copy of which was leaked by a source in the
banking industry, quotes US authorities as saying the credit
card information, including expiry dates and cardholder names
and addresses, was stoled by a hacker from an internet retail site.

It said the store of data on cards including Visa, Mastercard
and American Express was discovered on an unspecified 
government
computer system during an audit.

The letter said authorities had not identified the theif, but MSNBC
said investigators had since traced the criminal to eastern Europe.
The investigation involves diplomatic contacts with the country in
question.

---
--------------------------------------
. ^                       Stuart Udall
.~X\                 s_udall@yahoo.com
.~ \  http://cyberdelix.net/stuart.htm
          revolution through evolution

		  


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