A black market site called Brainsclub was hacked to retrieve data of over 26 million stolen debit and credit cards.
Krebson Security reported that data was stolen from the site named BrainsClub, in August. Which was made known to financial institutions, and they were able to monitor, identify, and reissue the compromised cards.
The card details were obtained by hacking several online and brick-and-mortar retailers over four years. It is reported that about 8 million records were updated to the site in 2019 alone.
Additional data retrieved from the hack reveals that BrainsClub stole 1.7 million cards in 2015, 2.9 million cards in 2016, 4.9 million in 2017, and 9.2 million in 2018.
FlashPoint Response To The Credit Card Hacks
Flashpoint, a security intelligence firm, confirms that the site had approximately $414 worth of stolen credit cards for sale. Flashpoint stated that the site made about $126 million in bitcoin from the sales of 9.1 million stolen cards.
About 14 million of the 26 million credit and debit cards retrieved by the hack may still be valid. While most hacks hurt people and lead to a compromise of personal information, this particular hack is considered a good one.
The director of security research at Flashpoint stated to Brian Krebs of KrebsOnSecurity that: “When people talk about ‘hacking back,' they are referring to things like this. “As long as our government is hacking into all these foreign government resources, they should be hacking into these carding websites too. Lots of attention is being given to this data now. And people are adjusting and working on it”.
Hacking always has negative impacts on individuals and companies. In 2019 alone, there have been successful hacks of well-known firms and apps. Such as NASA, Capital One, Words with Friends Twitter, and sprints.
The Equifax breach of 2017 is considered the most severe hack in history. The impact of this hack caused sensitive financial Data of about 145 million US customers to be exposed. And several million customers in the UK were also affected as well. The effect of this hack went beyond the intrusion to impact US customers with records held by Equifax competitor TransUnion.
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