It’s unusual for me to see an ID theft report coming out of Japan. There was the report last year involving Yahoo! Japan, but other than that, I’m hard-pressed to think of any cases offhand. Today’s Yomiuri Shimbun, however, reports one such case:
The Metropolitan Police Department arrested Chizuru Asahi, 21….. She allegedly used other people’s credit card numbers she illicitly obtained through card-generation malware called CreditMaster.
[…]
During a search of her house, the police seized eight credit cards issued under other people’s names.
Asahi was quoted by the police as saying, “We identified credit card numbers [originally issued] for more than 60 people based on these [eight] credit cards.”
[…]
This is the first time in Japan that a person has been charged in connection with a CreditMaster scheme, the Japan Credit Card Association said.
According to the association, credit card numbers are basically set sequentially based on a specific protocol created by individual credit companies.
The CreditMaster fraud scheme allows existing credit card numbers to be illicitly identified with computer software based on an existing number by making calculations based on the numb ter ofhe base card, excluding a specific set of numerals with which the credit card company can be identified.