Carding is one of the leading criminal industries in terms of growth rate. The amounts of people using debit and credit cards grow, as well as the amounts of online shops, banks or other enterprises, which collect credit card data of users. All this combined leads us to the fact that almost every cardholder in the USA is at constant risk of becoming a carding victim.
Carders, as it is easy to understand from the name, are people, who illegally access other people’s credit cards and perform operations from the behalf of the cardholder. The worst point for the cardholder is that he does not know he is about to get robbed. Carders might even wait for a bigger sum to land on the card account, before they cash it out.
The main ways carders receive the transactional information are:
• Skimming, which is scanning credit cards with portable devices. This method is the only one, which is not done online
• Phishing, which is creating fake versions of popular websites. Phishing websites usually use domains that are very similar to popular domains, in order to lure people, who might not notice the mistake in domain
• Key logging. This is a hacking attack, which involves recording user’s actions with his PC. Hackers gain access to the passwords for different websites of a particular user, his or her credit card data and tons of other personal information.
• Using memory tracking malware. This method also involves hacking. Hackers set up their malware on the memory of the payment processor of the selected website and gain access to every card used on that website.
• Using exploits. This method is about analyzing the weaknesses of the security systems of the websites and using these weaknesses to gain access to personal information of users, including their credit or debit card numbers, PIN’s and even SSN’s.
After criminals gain access to such information, they either resell it to other parties, or steal the money themselves. The theft, however, does not simply require making a money transfer, it is a complicated process aimed at hiding the track of money and real identity of the carder.
Carding is most widely spread in the USA, however, this does not mean other countries are safe. USA leads in terms of carding, as the Americans were the first to start using credit and debit cards in such a scale. Nowadays, in other countries cards are getting more and more popular, creating new space of operation for criminals.