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Webroot Uncovers Site Offering PayPal Accounts for Sale

Webroot’s Dancho Danchev reports that a new underground e-shop has been launched specifically to sell access to hacked PayPal accounts. “The E-shop is exclusively targeting United States citizens, and currently has an inventory of 1,543 hacked PayPal accounts, followed by another 14 for the United Kingdom,” Danchev writes. “The cybercriminals who sell the information provide […]

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Jeff Goldman

Feb 22, 2013

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Webroot’s Dancho Danchev reports that a new underground e-shop has been launched specifically to sell access to hacked PayPal accounts. “The E-shop is exclusively targeting United States citizens, and currently has an inventory of 1,543 hacked PayPal accounts, followed by another 14 for the United Kingdom,” Danchev writes.

“The cybercriminals who sell the information provide potential buyers with information such as account holder’s first name, selling price, account type, balance, and if the associated credit card and bank account are confirmed or not,” writes Softpedia’s Eduard Kovacs. “For instance, a verified account with a balance of $3 with the card and the bank confirmed is sold for $3. For $20, anyone can purchase a verified ‘premier’ account with a balance of $337.”

“But that’s not all: the enterprising hacker is also throwing in a customer service perk,” Infosecurity reports. “‘What’s particularly interesting regarding this e-shop is the fact that the cybercriminal behind it tried to come up with a value-added service, in this case a built-in Socks5 proxy checker, to be used when interacting with the hacked PayPal accounts for greater anonymity,’ Danchev explained.”

“Danchev notes that, as a business model, it would obviously make more sense for the hacker to simply cash out from all the PayPal accounts rather than sell them at such a heavy loss, but that this method helps them ‘monetise the fraudulently obtained data as soon as possible’ while keeping security tighter to maintain the pirates’ future successes in hacking and selling more accounts,” writes Computing News’ Peter Gothard.

Jeff Goldman

eSecurity Planet contributor Jeff Goldman has been a technology journalist for more than 20 years and an eSecurity Planet writer since 2009. He's also written extensively about wireless and broadband infrastructure and semiconductor engineering. He started his career at MTV, but soon decided that technology writing was a more promising path.

Webroot Uncovers Site Offering PayPal Accounts for Sale

Jeff Goldman

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