Fight against credit card fraud gets help from learning machine

In a blitzkrieg attack that took place over 12 hours in late 2012 and early 2013, criminals stole 45-million (U.S.) from two banks by hacking into credit card processing firms in India and the United States, then withdrawing money from ATMs in 27 countries. "In the place of guns and masks, this cybercrime organization used laptops and the Internet," New York attorney Loretta Lynch said at a news conference. "Moving as swiftly as data over the Internet … they became a virtual criminal flash mob, going from machine to machine, drawing as much money as they could, before these accounts were shut down." The mob infiltrated credit card processing firms, stole prepaid Visa and MasterCard debit card account numbers issued by the banks in the Middle-East and programmed them with extreme balances. The account numbers were emailed or texted to cohorts on the ground, who used a device to encode the account numbers onto the magnetic stripes of dummy cards.