Mobile UPI  |   About UPI  |   UPI en Español  |   UPI Arabic  |   UPIU  |   My Account
Search:
Go

Cybergangs infiltrate social network sites

|
|
 
  
Published: April 23, 2009 at 9:54 AM

WASHINGTON, April 23 (UPI) -- Cybergangs are hiring employees to decipher the distorted letters, or "captchas," used by social networking Web sites to guard against spam, experts say.

Researchers say there are probably dozens of captcha-breaking gangs employing hundreds of people worldwide. The workers are recruited via Web-based ads and toil piecemeal in Internet cafes or in sweatshops filled with PCs in China, India, Russia, Brazil, Argentina and Nigeria, USA Today reported Thursday.

Popular social sites such as Facebook and MySpace, once immune from mass e-mail spammers because users had to decipher and type in a series of distorted letters to access the system, have been infected by gangs hiring people to decipher thousands of captchas per day, paying a penny per captcha, USA Today said.

Experts say this has allowed gangs to create tens of thousands of fake e-mail and social network accounts, then employing them as starting points for a series of cyberscams spread by e-mail and instant messages, such as the "koobface" virus.

"We shouldn't have any illusions about captchas," Sergei Shevchenko, a virus hunter at Internet security firm PC Tools, told the newspaper. "If the professionals want to break in, they'll do it."

Recommended Stories
© 2009 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

Order reprints
  
Join the conversation
Most Popular Collections
The Tibetan Moniam Festival in China Super Bowl XLVI ticker tape victory parade Proposition 8 ruled unconstitutional in California
AARP Movies for Grownups Award Gala The Most Desirable Women of 2012 Snowy Owls make appearance in Washington
Additional Top News Stories
1 of 15
Rose McGowan at The Heart Truth's Red Dress Fall 2012 Collections at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week In New York
View Caption
fark
Bus driver rescues students on her elementary school bus after kid's science project goes critical,...
The most amazing portraits created with packing tape you will see all day
According to the United States Census Bureau, when a child is being watched by his father, that's...
You put a guy named Skeeter in charge of your charitable fund, of COURSE he's going to blow your...
Subby, for one, welcomes our new Pennsylvania Purple Squirrel overlords (with purple-pic)
The toughest place to be a train driver