Dastardly cybercriminals. Is there nothing they won’t do?
Security researchers recently spotted a black market ad offering to sell the personal Social Security numbers and other personal data belonging to infants. The purported data set for each unsuspecting tot included birth dates and their moms’ maiden names, and costs $300 in Bitcoin per child.
Why might babies be in demand on the stolen data market? Clean credit history. Also the victim, or their parents, are unlikely to discover the crime.
On some dark web forums, cybercriminals can take classes on how to steal credit card data. Members of these forums also sell “fullz,” a slang term for full sets of people’s personal information.
The listing for infant data was discovered by researchers at Terbium Labs, a dark web intelligence firm. The cost and age of the alleged victims came as a surprise to Emily Wilson, the company’s director of analysis.
Although the firm has seen child data for sale before, this was the first time it has seen infants’ data for sale.
“It’s unusual to have information specifically marked as belonging to children or to infants on these markets,” Wilson said.
The interest is not surprising. According to a 2011 report from Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab, the rate of child identity theft is 51 times higher than for adults (whose data sets cost about $10 – $25 on dark web markets).
[via ProPublica, images found without attribution on the Anonymous Internet]