Remember a few years ago when hackers would sit under bridges or aside busy highways and steal cell phone numbers, then use them to make free phone calls? Well, The New York Times reports that’s evolved in a lucrative war driving/wireless hacker/identity theft scam.
One Miami shopping district is getting hit particularly hard, where hackers have targeted major stores with strong wireless signals and weak security.
Sitting outside stores like DSW Shoe Warehouse, BJs and others, the hackers would use off-the-shelf hardware and software to steal customers’ credit card numbers.
“For more than a month, the hackers ‘robbed’ the same shops again and again of premium card account numbers stored in their databases. Then, after security upgrades were announced or investigators showed up on site, the data thieves moved on – to another shop they had already staked out on the same side of the street,” the paper reports.
