Week in Security

Zeus

The FBI warned of a variant of the infamous Zeus malware called "Gameover," which bypasses common authentication methods to access and drain bank accounts. After the accounts are drained, Gameover launches a denial of service attack against the victim's financial institution to prevent legitimate users from logging in. (Image: ThinkStock)

Workforce

Cybercrooks are hiring hundreds of people for the "low-skilled, low-paying" job of defeating CAPTCHAs, the blurry text that websites ask users to retype to determine if they are real human beings, Brian Krebs reported Monday at Krebsonsecurity.com. These anti-CAPTCHA services can be used to post spammy website comments, which can be used to link to scam sites, and they run cheap: services charge clients up to a dollar for each 1,000 CAPTCHAs bypassed. (Image: ThinkStock)

Teamwork

Banks are expressing more interest in working together to fight fraud — a trend that chips away at what The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday called "that old go-it-alone mindset." The thinking among banks has long been that sharing any data on fraud would give away competitive information, but the fraudsters have never been as shy about sharing their own secrets with each other. (Image: ThinkStock)

Tech War

Last week, thousands of active credit card numbers belonging to Israelis were exposed by hackers claiming to be from Saudi Arabia. This week, an alleged Israeli hacker has retaliated by publishing the card numbers of hundreds of Saudi Arabian citizens, The Jerusalem Post reported Wednesday. The Israeli hacker told the Post that this was something of a warning shot — the exposed numbers did not include the three-digit security codes necessary for online transactions. Those would be released if there are further breaches affecting Israelis, he said. (Image: ThinkStock)

On-Screen

Cards with built-in displays are getting some fresh attention. Dynamics Inc., which makes a screen-card with a rewritable stripe, showed off its card at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Ars Technica reported Wednesday. The NagraID card, which uses decoy security codes, was featured in a Wednesday story on Consumerist.

Sized Up

An alleged identity-theft ring was busted and 50 people charged for selling birth certificates, Social Security numbers and driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. The sellers allegedly used code words to refer to specific identities: "skirts" for females, "pants" for males and "sizes" for the age of the person whose identity is being sold. The ring allegedly victimized hundreds of Puerto Ricans. (Image: ThinkStock)

Pickpockets?

About 100 people are suspected in a massive identity-theft scheme that relied on some old-fashioned tricks. The suspects are accused of stealing identity documents by burglarizing homes and cars, rather than by hacking into large databases, Credit Union Journal reported Thursday. The suspects are accused of stealing more than $2 million from banks and credit unions in 14 states. (Image: ThinkStock)