Fergie's Tech Blog

Security Fix: Web Fraud 2.0: Faking Your Internet Address

Brian Krebs writes on Security Fix:

One of the casualties from the unplugging of McColo Corp. is fraudcrew.com, a Web service that offered paying customers the ability to hide their identities online by routing their traffic through computers controlled by others.

Fraudcrew, which has not been charged with any crime, offered subscribers a point-and-click way to mask the source of their Internet connections, so that Web sites could not tell the true location of visitors using the service. The site was advertised heavily on Russian online forums catering to computer hacking and identity theft.

There are a number of services like those offered by Fraudcrew (Security Fix profiled another one earlier this year) that not only aid in hiding one's identity online, but could also defeat security measures put in place by financial institutions. Many online banks will check to see whether the customer's Internet address is coming from a location already associated with the customer's user name and password, or at least from a geographic location that is close to where the customer lives.

posted by Fergie @ 11/21/2008 05:43:00 PM