Did Retailers Learn Any Lessons From Gonzalez?
April 29th, 2010
Albert Gonzalez succeeded—for several years, at least—as arguably the world's most effective cyberthief, breaking into many of the largest retail chains (Target, 7-Eleven, TJX, JCPenney, Sports Authority, etc.). His methodologies for breaking in were clean, but his methods of avoiding detection for years (despite extensive network activity and huge file transfers) and of cleaning up his tracks forensically kept the world's top law enforcement agents stymied.
A post-conviction look at how Gonzalez was caught suggests a change in the type of retailers likely to be targeted and ways today's largest chains can protect themselves. But it also raises questions about whether the very nature of such a large-scale a cyber-attack could ever succeed, assuming success is defined as both getting the money and not getting caught. Retailers are worried about protecting against similar attacks, but it's not likely to be repeated—at least not in the same way.Read more...
Cards issued by European banks when used online cross border don't usually support AVS checks. So, when a European card is used with a billing address that's in the US, an ecom merchant wouldn't necessarily know that the shipping zip code doesn't match the billing code.
-Marc
