CastleCops DDoS Fails, now Fake PayPal donations roll in...

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Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 6:19 pm

Here's a new twist: The DDoS having failed to shut down CC, and thus embarrassed a few botnet herders, fake PayPal donations from compromised accounts are now flooding the site. Link

Admins here might want to check the cash register for fake checks.... Evil or Very Mad

Elite Baiter Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 1702

Sending bogus paypal to somewhere like here and castlecops is stupid.
Half the members there are cops, and castlecops has a good relationship with paypal, so im off to read the story, but id guess it will make the criminals look bloody stupid - first there attack is wrecked then the plan B leads to half of the police out looking for em lol.

As for here, any donation has your username next to it, without a username it goes back, When i first joined thats exactly what happened i had to submit my username otherwise Not accepted Wink

Baiting Guru Joined: 06 May 2004 Posts: 4012

digital-one, I think you are missing the point. This is not about popularity contests for the criminals. They do not care whether you or anyone else thinks that they are stupid or not. They do not care either whether LE will go after them or not - I think it is safe to assume that they feel quite safe from any LE going after them.

The point of this attack is to cause inconvenience for those they attacked. And this they managed to do the moment an angry phishing victim assumes that castlecops stole their money. And guess what? That is exactly what happened. It costs time and nerves to go through all these fraudulent transactions, contact all those phishing victims, and give them back their money. It also means that paypal will investigate the whole thing, and while this of course will not get castlecops in trouble with the law, it does cost them time. I can assure you that it is decidedly NOT fun if paypal calls you to tell you that your account has been frozen, and that it is under investigation.

The criminals want to send a message to anyone who attacks them in a serious way: prepare yourself for a great deal of annoyance.

This is of course no real threat, but it is annoying. It does show however also, and this is really important, that the criminals are angry enough about cc to invest money in causing them trouble. They could have kept the money from these compromised paypal accounts themselves, but they chose not to. That shows that they indeed feel quite threatened, and this is a very good sign. See also here: http://www.castlecops.com/a6825-Were_doing_something_right_getting_1Gb_s_Attacked.html

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 1:10 am

I found out about this over at slashdot. Some good takes on the whole issue too.

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/18/1658212&from=rss

419eater had a discussion going about it too for awhile. Of course there was some discussion about how Slashdotting a site under a DDOS really wasn't going to help things out to much!

Short view on this; we're hurting them. And scam-baiters don't need a home site to keep slapping.

Elite Baiter Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 1702

@meyer with due respect, i have now read the story, I do understand what the criminals are trying to do, BUT i still think im right, they changed tactics when the DDos was not working as desired, that sends out a message that there not as powerful as they like to pretend to be.

As for paypal yes that can be devastating for people to have there money stolen, and its why were all keeping going with even more determination than before - and in that respect im right it had the opposite effect that it did not close us all down it made us more determined than ever to fight them.

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 12:46 pm

CastleCops were lucky because they have the right connections, but what if you get such a fraudulent transaction? I guess you would have a lot of explaining to do.

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 1:12 pm

^^ How would the recipient be in trouble for fraudulent paypal transactions?

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 1:29 pm

It's usually money mules that get these transactions and they are often prosecuted.

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 1:40 pm

Exact same thing happened to the AA419 donations account at paypal. Same day, same story, same sort of payments.
For anyone that can't imagine what this means and how it will affect the recipient of the money, here's the deal:

1) Paypal account is frozen.
2) I will become the suspect in an investigation, being accused of being a money mule.
3) They demand from me: a) scanned CC bill b) scanned utility bill c) transaction of at least one cent from bank to my paypal account d) scanned passport.
4) The fees for booking back the money have been deducted from our funds in the account. Even though we will get those back at some point, it's still a bitch.
5) The folks whose accounts have been emptied think I am the thief.

I think this is quite enough reason for not wanting this to happen to oneself.

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 1:47 pm

I think many people on this forum still think baiting is a game. It may have been when the main group of scammers came from the African Continent, but with the increasing involvement of Russian, Romanian and Other European Criminals it is no longer funny.

If you bait you are now involved in a cyber war and the Scammers are out to discredit you in any way possible. Bait Safe must become a mantra.

Separate your real life persona completely from your baiting identity and if necessary, change your id here. We used to joke about the scammer or the police calling. It is no longer a joke. The Russian Mafia play for keeps.

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 7:26 pm

digital-one wrote:

... when the DDos was not working as desired ...

Huh?

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 7:29 pm

If there's any doubt: the DDOS is still going strong. They haven't given up yet.

419Eater Admin Joined: 30 Sep 2003 Posts: 7469

digital-one wrote:

the DDos was not working as desired, that sends out a message that there not as powerful as they like to pretend to be.

I agree. I think the people behind these attacks probably underestimated the determination of people here and at other sites to continue our work, despite the huge amount of effort these criminals are/were putting in. No doubt they may well in future batter our sites into submission for certain periods of time, but in the end we'll still be here to carry on where we left off!

So far (touch wood) Eater doesn't seem to have had any dodgy payments, though I have had a word with Paypal just in case.

I'm sure we haven't seen the last of these types of attacks, and it can never be repeated enough that at the end of the day we are dealing with real criminals, and it is very important to cover your tracks as much as possible.

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 8:36 am

I would like to point out that the DOS attacks were far from unsuccessful. They shut down the sites (temporarily, but they did cause the sites to shut down) and caused the admins an aweful amount of work, which we as ordinary members have not seen. Just think that if these sites were commercial, they would have lost money due to the attacks. Don't make the mistake of taking these criminals to be fools and idiots.

Elite Baiter Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 1702

@ Dion, people like windypoops worked round the clock helping us all get home, many thanks to them is due, but it shows clearly even under the heaviest attack I have seen members reformed, and looped back, to that end the attack did fail. And many thanks due to the admin here and rover and lotta and all those who helped us all in the difficult times.

I also very much agree with old coaster, someone out there has definately upped the stakes, baiting safe is now mandatory. and yes its now more like cyber warfare than games, but everyone is now doubling there efforts.

I'm 100% on the side of shiver, and thankfully as shiver said we havent been affected so far by the new tactics, I feel bad for those who were and it just means we have to work even harder to get people to realise antivirus software and such is essential as well.

I still think we should "play down" the devastation the paypal can cause as its obvious they are aware of us, and panic is what they want, but we can NEVER give in to them, we must stand firm and say yes - its terrible what the criminals are upto, but the real victims are those who are having there accounts stolen by the criminals, and somewhere along the line no one is mentioning them, there the real victims in this attack, whilst castlecops and aa419 are undoubtedly suffering, others are being robbed, and I joined eater to stop people being robbed.

Pro-active defence is what we can fight back with, if people start calling radio stations and talking about it, the radio stations will broadcast people to check there paypal, obviously baiting is fun too, no one can deny that but we really need to begin to think back to why it all began, people have already proven themselves strong enough to keep in contact despite the criminal activity but we cant at this point crumble because the attacks continue we must now were all home deal with this second threat too and my thinking is the best way is to give it some clout and alert as many radio / news stations as we can.

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 8:03 pm

What can really make a difference is for all members here to take up the cudgels and kill a job scam or fake escrow site every day!

Just one email ( and some research) can make a big difference!!

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