Rogue Pharma, Fake AV Vendors Feel Credit Card Crunch
Summary: Researchers at George Mason University, the International Computer Science Institute, and UC San Diego made hundreds of test buys at 40 shady sites selling knockoff drugs, counterfeit software and fake antivirus, and found most transactions ran through just 12 banks in Azerbaijan, China, Georgia, Latvia and Mauritius. After the results went into an International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition database and brandholders complained to Visa, merchant accounts used in the fraud generally stopped being used within one month.
Bottom line: A pharmacy affiliate program manager wrote on a Russian-language forum that from November 2011 Visa levied $25,000 fines on every domain carrying Viagra, Cialis or Levitra brands, and that sizable affiliate programs have paid hundreds of thousands in fines - one affiliate said 'fucking Visa is burning us with napalm.'
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Data Breaches
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