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March 12, 2007
This is getting serious –and eBay deny responsibility
In the latest issue of ukauctionline.co.uk I told you about the Romanian guy who is hacking into eBay. Well he or one of his countrymen has gone a stage further. On 8th March , an alleged Romanian hacker calling himself "Born_To_Scam_American_Guys" posted records for 15 eBay users on an eBay forum for between 40-60 minutes before the company removed them. The post appeared on eBay’s Trst and Safety board.
I did not see the post myself bt according to FireMeg which is rapidly becoming one of the major eBay watching blogs the posting appeared early on Thursday morning. It started with some taunting and culminated in the the worldwide posting of confidential financial information of fifteen different eBay members, including social security numbers, credit card numbers, bank account and routing numbers, ATM PIN numbers, mother's maiden names, driver's license numbers, as well as home addresses and full contact information.
To see the full text of Firemegs blog go to http://firemeg.blogspot.com/
The information apparently remained on the screen for around 40 mintes before being pulled by eBay. Catherine England, a spokeswoman for eBay, said that only half the accounts were legitimate. The other half looked like fraudulent accounts based on verification information that didn't clear eBay's verification process, she said. As for the half that were legitimate eBay accounts, eBay was in the process of contacting the victims as of Friday, March 9, 7:40 p.m. EST.
Some of the victims eBay had managed to contact by that time said that all of the information posted about them was accurate, while others noted some inaccuracies, England said.
However, eBay stated that the information could not have come from them as some of the included details were never held or requested by eBay. There theory is that the information was gathered using “phishing” techniques.
This problem has been in the news now for several weeks and it is worrying that eBay have not been able to come p with a solution. At the moment we all need to be on or guard. From what I can discover the current threat seems to be to eBay.com but it would be foolish to think it cold not happen to us.
EBay seem to be saying it is all down to us, I am not sure that is totally true but we do need to be ultra cautious when giving anyone details of or eBay account. One step yo can take is to download the ebay tool bar which will alert you to any false e-mails purporting to come from eBay or Paypal.
Posted by Dave Bromley at March 12, 2007 04:42 PM
