Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Botnet Steals eBay Accounts

Gregg Keizer, Computerworld

Online auction site eBay has been targeted by identity thieves, who are wielding a botnet that uses brute force to uncover valid account log-in information, a Tel Aviv-based security company said Monday.

The attacks against eBay Inc. may have started as long ago as early August, said Ofer Elzam. He said that he and other researchers at Aladdin Knowledge Systems Ltd. have not been successful in notifying eBay of their weekend findings.

According to Elzam, the product manager of Aladdin's eSafe threat-protection line, the brute-force attacks are launched by a large botnet that the identity thieves have built using a sophisticated, multistage campaign that begins with compromised legitimate Web sites.

"My best estimate is that there are at least 300 compromised sites," said Elzam, who noted that they are spread worldwide and in several languages.

source article here

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