PayPal Inc. urges its customers to "verify" their accounts by linking a checking account or credit card - a process that also makes the accounts more valuable to hackers.
Fraudsters buy and sell unverified accounts for as little as 50 cents each,
The compromised accounts were posted for sale at iProfit.su, Krebs wrote. He verified that one of the accounts was legit - it belonged to someone at an Ohio software development firm. When Krebs reached out to the firm, he learned that PayPal had already flagged the account and shut it down.
The account in question had a listed balance of $1,102.37 and was being sold for $45, Krebs wrote. PayPal is a unit of eBay Inc. of San Jose, Calif.
