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Phishing for Carbon Credits

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  February 6th, 2010 at 12:05 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

If you invent a new currency, don’t be surprised when the scammers and counterfeiters show up. Especially when your currency is itself a scam.

Hackers Steal Millions in Carbon Credits

The hackers launched a targeted phishing attack against employees of numerous companies in Europe, New Zealand and Japan, which appeared to come from the German Emissions Trading Authority. The workers were told that their companies needed to re-register their accounts with the Authority, where carbon credits and transactions are recorded.

When workers entered their credentials into a bogus web page linked in the e-mail, the hackers were able to hi-jack the credentials to access the companies’ Trading Authority accounts and transfer their carbon credits to two other accounts controlled by the hackers. …

According to the BBC, it’s estimated the hackers stole 250,000 carbon credit permits from six companies worth more than $4 million. At least seven out of 2,000 German firms that were targeted in the phishing scam fell for it. One of these unidentified firms reportedly lost $2.1 million in credits in the fraud.

Wired’s online commenters seem to get it:

Well somebody’s going to rob the taxpayers blind, it might as well be hackers….

Is it illegal to steal [a] fraudulent product?

What’s next? Possibly this:

Dear Sir or Madam.

I found your name on the email listing, I am Ngweke Ndugu, Chief Barrister of the Federal Carbon Bank in Lagos, Nigeria. Recently, I discovered twenty-two millions of U.S. dollars ($22,000,000.00 ONLY) in unclaimed Carbon Credits …

Cross-posted at VladEnBlog

@VladimirRS

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  • http://pocketchangeproductions.net/ anotherindyfilmguy

    That just warms me deep down on a cold winter’s night…

  • http://itsaboutfreedom.proboards.com Conservative Phantom

    …they can turn around and sell them to Algore. That would be the icing on the cake.

    You can tell, though, how valuable carbon credits are based on how easy it was to steal them.

    Too funny for words.

    So is this dancing Obama vid:

    http://tinyurl.com/yged8f6 Enjoy.

  • http://xmmlbchat.blogspot.com katesmith

    The UK Telegraph reported in 12/30/09 of rampant “organized crime” in carbon trading across a variety of countries. Europol said up to 90% of carbon trading could be organized crime. ‘Phishing’ makes it sound less serious. Since day 1 it has been said carbon trading was perfectly suited for organized crime. A Bloomberg report from Brussels mentioned how all the European registries are connected to the United Nations software program. A UN spokesman said yesterday that everything was fine, nothing to worry about. The UN has always been a joke, but now they are involved electronically with most if not all carbon trades made on the planet. We already have carbon trading in the US. Proponents seeing a delay on a national carbon deal did a u-turn and have gone aggressively to shaking down unsuspecting businesses via state and local auctions, collectives or what have you.

    • irishcurmudgeon

      The whole scheme was set up by orgainized crime: UN, EU and the AGW crowd. It’s good to know they’ve lost 10% share of the racket.

  • JadedByPolitics

    with his fishing scheme! It should be only fair that “pranksters” steal from the real THIEVES!

    • stratdaddy

      the fun really begins. Gotta believe CEOs and lawyers are huddling right now discussing all this “settled science”. When the lights go out at Generation Investment Management we will finally be able to say Gore made a positive contribution to the environment.

    • stratdaddy

      the fun really begins. Gotta believe CEOs and lawyers are huddling right now discussing all this “settled science”. When the lights go out at Generation Investment Management we will finally be able to say Gore made a positive contribution to the environment.

  • Dan Perrin

    the science behind global warming and now, its so-called solution, continues….

    Bets usually focus on either Russia or China as the most likely of the usual suspects.

    The op has a certain symmetry to it, a very artist look.

  • NeoKong

    What a coincidence.
    Two boxes. The guy sold to me real cheap and threw in some unicorn seeds.
    They make great gifts.

    • Dan Perrin

      ;)

  • Leopard1996

    We are America, we can try what we know through out history is a failure, but we can make it succeed because we are so, so, much better than those other people were /sarc

    Another example of a dopey policy that Liberal TRAITORS want to ram down our throats so that we can be just as handicapped.

  • dennism

    World of Warcraft, often referred to as WoW, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) by Blizzard Entertainment. With more than 11.5 million (December 2008) monthly subscriptions,World of Warcraft is currently the world’s most-subscribed MMORPG.

    Evidently the strategy is for the player to acquire a lot of virtual gold. WOW gold. As with other MMORPGs, companies have emerged offering to sell virtual WOW gold and associated services such as “character leveling.” Spam bots advertise these services to WOW players. Gold is over 14 times more expensive to buy on US realms than in Europe.

    Many of the rewards players collect are bound to their individual character and cannot be traded, generating a market for the trading of accounts with well-equipped characters. The highest World of Warcraft account trade was for $9,900 in September 2007.

    The practice of buying or selling gold in World of Warcraft has generated significant controversy. Blizzard reports that customers who had paid for “character leveling” services had found their accounts compromised months later, with all items stripped and sold for virtual gold. Leveling service companies often use “disruptive hacks … which can cause realm performance and stability issues”.

    Caveat emptor.

    • mustango

      Blizzard Entertainment, the publishers of WoW, have taken a lot of steps recently to curb such practices, including legal actions and attempts to de-emphasize gold in the game (for example introducing substitute currencies that cannot be traded).

      Other MMORPGs deal with this issue in different ways. An Iceland-based spacefaring game called EVE Online, for example, actually has a sanctioned method for converting their game currency into real world currency.

      Somewhat interestingly in terms of relevance to the original post, a just-launched MMORPG based on the Star Trek franchise uses as one of its primary currencies something called “energy credits”. That seems a… familiar-sounding concept.

  • 4life

    shown to be a bad idea, the more fervent the dems are in trying to push it through? Fortunately, they will run into one big huge stumbling block in November. The American Voter. Thank you Massachussettts, for taking the first step toward sanity!

  • Common_Cents

    Algore would have to purchase idiot offsets.

  • Raven

    I am reminded of the ending scene in “Finding Nemo” The fish finally escape the dentist’s office and are sitting in the bay still in their plastic bags. The blowfish looks at the others and says, “Now what?”

    Well, the phish have the carbon credits…
    “Now what?”