Cyber criminals leak one million credit cards on the dark web

Hackers have given away the details of over a million stolen credit cards in a bid to promote a new cyber criminal carding marketplace on the dark web.

The cards were stolen between 2018 and 2019 and have appeared on a stolen card market called AllWord.Cards.

According to researchers at Cyble, the hackers unleashed these details to promote their cyber crime marketplace and over 20% of the credit cards are still valid. The marketplace has been around since May 2021 and is available on a Tor channel too.

The leaked details contain credit card numbers, expiry dates, CVV numbers, names, addresses, zip codes, email addresses, and phone details.

The leak affects up to 500 banks, including JP Morgan and Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD Bank). Around 83,433 of the cards were from the US.

The leak has also been analyzed by Italian cyber security company D3 Lab. It found that over 50% of the cards were still valid.

“At present, the feedback returned to our analysis team is still limited, but they are showing an incidence close to 50% of cards still operational, not yet identified as compromised,” researchers said.

“The cards marketed on carding sites usually have different origins: skimmers at petrol stations or in supermarket Point of Sale, cards from phishing, from databases of compromised sites, etc.”

D3 Lab researchers said the All World Cards curators began advertising their services on carding sites in early June.

“It is conceivable that the data was shared for free to entice other criminal actors to frequent their website by purchasing additional stolen data from unsuspecting victims,” said researchers.

Javvad Malik, security awareness advocate at KnowBe4, told ITPro that as these were stolen some years ago, it can be difficult to determine where they came from and if they were from a single source or multiple sources.

“It goes to show that even if a breach isn't apparent or noticed, criminals can take advantage of lax security controls many years after the fact. So all organizations should remain vigilant at all times,” he said.

“The good news is that banking has tried and tested controls in place to deal with stolen credit cards and fraudulent transactions. Consumers should always check their bank statements carefully and ensure that there are no unknown transactions and contact their bank as soon as possible if there is any suspicious activity to get the card blocked and a new one issued."