Nowadays no other criminal industry is growing faster than the industry of cybercrimes. Carding is a large part of that industry, as most carders operate online.
A carder is a person, who illegally obtains the credit card data of another person and steals the money from the card. Different schemes involve different approaches, but in most cases there are three phases in the process of carding:
1. Acquiring the information
2. Testing it
3. Cashing out the card
The first phase is the trickiest one, as it usually involves using hacking methods to gain access to someone’s transactional information. Carders might either perform massive attacks in order to obtain thousands of credit cards, or setting up phishing websites for people to pass the necessary data by themselves.
However, for less IT-experienced criminals, who are not able to perform hacking attacks, there is an option to purchase the information on the dark web. There exist special forums, where one can buy a full package of transactional information for less than 200$. This packages include card number, PIN, date of expiration, cardholder’s name and even his or her social security number.
Despite the fact, that carding is usually considered a cybercrime, some carders do not ever go online. They use the offline method of stealing card data called skimming. They purchase small scanning devices, which they might secretly put on the actual payment terminals. After its deployment, the device starts scanning every card, which passed the selected terminal.
The second phase of the process is not that complicated, but also requires some IT skills. Carders do not usually steal money right at the moment they obtain the transactional data. Most of this data is resold, which requires time. That is why it is necessary to check, whether the information is actual and it is possible to perform a transaction. Carders usually have large databases of cards, so they use bots to check the actuality of the information.
The last phase of carding is cashing out the card or simply stealing the money from a card. Though, the main process is much easier than acquiring the card information, keeping the secrecy might require much effort. As all criminals, carders try hide to anonymize themselves and hide their tracks, so that the police is not able to catch them. In most cases, carders try to divide labor as much as possible and to use different methods of staying anonymous online.