Friday, December 29, 2006

EBAY'S BACK DOOR WIDE OPEN & LETTING SCAMMERS IN

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EBAY'S BACK DOOR WIDE OPEN & LETTING SCAMMERS IN
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There is a scammer's tool floating around the web that has been offered for sale to several ebaY users. This tool allows a scammer to access ALL user info through a utility ebaY uses to track all user information.

If you look at this link, you will see a page with ebaY seller information overlaid with the scammers SCO Helper program that allows the scammer to send second chance offers through ebaY's own system, to potential victims who have bid on the legitimate seller's items.
http://corriganb.com/sco.jpg
View Scam Tool Sample

Vladuz appears to be the person who wrote the program to break into the part of ebaY where all user information resides, and where it can be manipulated. He/She also appears to have authored "utilities" to exploit this open back door - such as the SCO Helper, that allows scammers to exploit second chance offers. As far as we can figure from online research, Vladuz is the online handle of a Romanian programmer/hacker, whose name pops up in relation to various scammer sites.

It is very possible that this ebaY function is what is being used by the scammers to post the BAPE auctions, and monitor email queries, replies and payments so they can reroute them. It is obvious that this information is readily accessible to the scammers, and that ebaY has not done anything to close the back door being used by the scammers.

For everyone wondering how scammers on ebaY manage to hijack accounts at will, this is the answer. ebaY says the scammers are getting the info due to ebaY users falling for phishing scams. That explanation let ebaY off the hook, but TAG never believed it, as it never made sense. In light of the BAPE scams - see this article -
BAPE Scam
it was definitely NOT falling for a phishing scam that exposed the user information of "Jack" or other tech savvy users who have contacted us since, with the same story. In the article we said that it appeared to have to be an insider with access to inside ebaY information. We now conclude that it may not be an ebaY insider, but instead an outsider, with complete access to all user account inside information.

If this is as it appears, ebaY is and has been aware of this wide open back door, and can't or won't do anything about it. We will update this on our website as more information becomes available.

Class action suit anyone?

An interesting note, is that since the earthquake on 26 Dec in Asia, cut off internet access to China and other Asian countries, the number of scams on ebaY has dropped drastically, as is easy to see by searching for BAPE Hoody listings.

Another note of interest is a reference to this tool that appeared on a Chinese Blog. The translation is done via the Google page translator, and as such is not the greatest - but it gives a good idea of what is going on. We have edited out a vulgar word or two - but the rest is as it appeared. Please take note of the dates!

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Ebay fishing website procedures
Author : indifference boys Date : 2006-03-30
Small size of the Chinese University :

Classification tool backdoor procedure : "br/> Linux operating platforms :
Tools size : 29,103 Bytes
MD5 5de7108546dfdaeb6d06fb3e02ad2af4 documents :
Source : fac@frauda.net tools

Ebay fishing website procedures "br/>Readme file
Copyright 2004 vladuz
Fac@frauda.net
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=
Updates : 1.6 : - WORKS WITH REGISTER_GLOBALS OFF!
- Checks if cvv2. cc and pin are numeric only if they are long enough and in lenght. (3 cvv2 min. pin min 4 min 16 cc)
- After script deletes cookie completed tasks
=

Ebay scam turns v1.6 FINAL~ This scam is in many ways.
It does the following :

Http://www.basd-action.net/initiatives/index.php : identical login/sign-in page of 22,500 (the new one)

Index2.php : 1 : if _ _ _ user password are invalid. it will show the identical '[invalid. try again 'of England.
2 : if user/pass are valid. cc/cvv2/exp/real echo ask for the name and current address.
3 : it can check if a user/pass are valid or not.

Index3.php : 1 : Send email and redirect my home to 22,500
2 : Verify if all fields are filled in corectly.
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You must have the following installed (this turns on Yahoo hosting files work (paid one))
1. Libcurl installed with PHP.
2. Some brain to configure it.
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Configuration :
Open your password setup and index2.php
Open index3.php and setup your subject and email address.
Your email is where you get the emails with user/pass/cc/cvv2/name/exp-date/ip/date/time
Subject is the email subject
Your password is used for email verification or manual checks. For example, if you setuped your password as "vladuz" and you want to do a manual check for the user "a" pass with "b" you have to type this in the government payments are capped : index2.php?user=a&pass=b&pwd=vladuz
On manual verification (when using pwd=) Invalid! the file will either return or, if valid. it will return the user and pass (for copy/paste hehe)
Simple enough?
Well go there and the [expletives deleted]!
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For ANY fac@frauda.net scam email me and I 'll do it in 30 hours max.
Study it, and refrain from doing bad things!
Member of the document only allows downloading! Download the registration |
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Sunday, December 17, 2006

ebaY Insider Hijack Scam?

ebaY Insider Hijack Scam?
Sat 16 Dec 06

On Tuesday 12 Dec 2006 we received an email from a subscriber, describing how his ebaY selling account had been hijacked, and was being used to sell BAPE Hoody shirts. There were many interesting elements of this hijacking, different from those we have seen in the past. Upon seeing items he had not listed, the legitimate account holder, let's call him Jack, removed the listings and changed his password on the account. In addition he found that all his email notification preferences had been set to NO. He set them back to YES. By lunch time, the fake items were back, so this time using a work computer, Jack changed his ebaY password again. This made no difference and the items reappeared.

Jack's home computer is firewalled and has a full complement of detection software installed and active. He is a savvy user well versed in phishing, and has not responded in a long time to any ebaY "second chance" offers. He has not logged in to ebaY via any channel but his own links, and he has not filled in any pop up sign in request. Jack's work computer is on a very secure system, as he works in an industry where online security is paramount. He did not fall for a scam, have his computer invaded, have his identity stolen or compromised.

In trying to analyze what was going on, it appeared that the hijacker or hijackers had to have access to accounts independent of passwords, and have the ability to set account parameters so the legit account holder would not know what was going on. If this is so, it either points to someone working inside ebaY, or to a security hole so big, you can drive a tractor trailer through it. Neither situation is tolerable.

Searching ebaY for BAPE Hoody, brought up 140 pages of one day listings. All the one day listings were on hijacked accounts, and the hijacked accounts were used in groups by the first letter, so accounts with very high (usually 100%) feedback, starting with the letters G, H, I, J were in great evidence. The accounts were US accounts, but in reading the description, certain phrases would indicate that English was not the scammers first language. A check of the feedback would show the legitimate account holder as being a buyer only, or a seller of items not including designer clothing, or any clothing for that matter. Many accounts had been inactive for many months or years.

We did a buy it now on one item that was evidently on a hijacked account. We pulled the account holder's contact info, and it all appeared legitimate via a white pages check. We checked their email address against their PayPal address on PayPal, and that too appeared legitimate. The scammer never contacted us for payment, so we don't know how that part of the scam would have worked. Other emails with questions sent to the scammers by the folks helping us with this investigation, yielded answers such as "yes, if you buy two items ,you only pay them with 150USD .thanks" and "to you address total pay only US160.00" again suggesting that English was not their first language, and that the scammer had access to emails sent through the ebaY system. We tried another two BINs, but never heard from the scammer, despite repeated requests for payment information. The net result is, we don't know how the scammer worked this so that they received the payment rather than the legitimate account holder. We did eventually receive an email from the legitimate account holder on the last two BINs we did, saying their account was hijacked and not to make payment.

These items continued to be listed every day, with ebaY only shutting down a small percentage of them. If this is an ebaY insider job, TAG is baffled as to why they haven't tracked this to the source and shut it down.

As a matter of interest, some of the images have been tracked to this source whose domain is registered in Beijing, China - -
http://www.xhxh246.com/Product.asp?BigClassName=BAPESTASHOES
http://www.xhxh246.com/index.asp

This story is ongoing, so we will update it as we find more information.