Massive ID theft ring still operating

An estimated 27,000 people have been affected by an identity theft ring that was discovered earlier this month, according to Sunbelt Software, the security firm which uncovered the operation.

Eric Sites, the vice president of research and development at Sunbelt, said on Wednesday that some of the web servers involved in this operation are still operational and continuing to gather personal data from machines that have been infected with the malicious code responsible for the identity theft.

Sites said: "Some of the web servers have been shut down and we are still working with the FBI to investigate others. Information is no longer being sent to the one [server] we initially reported on but there are other variants of this [malicious code] that send data to other websites - these are also being investigated by [the] FBI."

The Secret Service is providing support to the FBI in this investigation, according to Sites.

Sunbelt initially contacted individual users who had been affected by the identity theft ring but Sites said it is no longer doing this as the company has "collected so much information that it is impossible to go through one by one".

Instead, Sunbelt has sent a list of customers that have been affected to credit card providers Mastercard and Visa, as well as online auction site eBay and its internet payment system PayPal. It is currently working on sending a similar list to credit card providers American Express and Discover, and will send another list to eBay and PayPal, as it has since gathered more information on the users who have been affected.

Once this is completed, Sunbelt will send a list of customers affected to various banks. The customers of more than 50 banks have been affected by this ID theft ring, according to an earlier Sunbelt interview.

Companies and individual internet users can now protect themselves against the keylogger involved in this identity theft ring by downloading a free tool from the Sunbelt website which detects and removes the malware.

Ingrid Marson writes for ZDNet UK