Cybergangs use cheap labor to break codes on social sites

From USA Today (Byron Acohido)
It’s become the new front in cybercrime: scams and identity-theft programs that attack e-mail accounts and users of social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.
To carry out many of these automated attacks, cybercriminals first must overcome “captchas,” the distorted letters and characters that users of an e-mail or social-networking account are required to type to complete certain online forms. For years, captchas have helped to stop or bog down automated programs aimed at creating, among other things, e-mail accounts that promote scams such as fake computer virus protection and bogus accounts on social websites that can be used to collect personal information on legitimate users.

From USA Today (Byron Acohido)

It’s become the new front in cybercrime: scams and identity-theft programs that attack e-mail accounts and users of social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

To carry out many of these automated attacks, cybercriminals first must overcome “captchas,” the distorted letters and characters that users of an e-mail or social-networking account are required to type to complete certain online forms. For years, captchas have helped to stop or bog down automated programs aimed at creating, among other things, e-mail accounts that promote scams such as fake computer virus protection and bogus accounts on social websites that can be used to collect personal information on legitimate users.

 

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