![]() Venmo is owned by PayPal, which has a public bug bounty program-that is, it pays hackers to report security vulnerabilities in its products.Īfter proxying my phone traffic through my laptop, I watched the network traffic as I navigated through the app. I was a grad student studying information security at the time, and I thought I might make some extra cash. Last summer, after paying my portion of the electric bill via Venmo, I started to wonder if there were holes I could poke in the app. And never accept or move money on behalf of someone else.Dan Salmon is a masters graduate from Minnesota State University who specializes in information security. Always question uninvited approaches in case it’s a scam, and check directly with the person concerned to verify the request. PayPal warns customers “to be wary if they receive unusual requests about their PayPal account, especially requests to move large amounts of money, even when the request appears to come from someone they know. ![]() We go to great lengths to protect our customers,” the payment giant said, “but there are still some basic precautions we should take to avoid scams.” We take this responsibility very seriously and use advanced fraud and risk management tools to keep our customers and their payments safe. PayPal told CyberNews “we never lose sight of the fact that we are entrusted to look after people’s money. The payments giant also questions the assumption that chargebacks are accepted by default. Better still, call the friend on the phone.įrom PayPal’s perspective, the chargeback mechanism is down to the credit card company’s policies and procedures where a transaction is disputed and reversed as such, they don’t accept that it is being abused. And make sure you contact them over a different messaging platform from the one they contacted you over. Unless you’re 100% certain, do not proceed. If a friend does message you in this way, call them to make sure it’s really them. It is not coming back.īeyond that, this is all about common sense. The money makes a number of further electronic hops (to prevent tracing to the endpoint) before it is withdrawn.The victim is unable to do the same with their transfer to the attacker’s account, there is no such safety net with a bank transfer.This is a chargeback, where the sender of the money (the attacker) has asked for it to be reversed using PayPal’s standard systems. But the next time they check their Paypal account, they find that the amount received has been reversed. In reality, this is the attacker’s bank account, to be used for a few scams and then closed. With the money received, the victim sends that same amount to their “friend,” using the bank account details provided.The money has been sent by the attacker, either from an account or card setup with fraudulent details or through a hacked PayPal account.The victim checks their PayPal statement and can see that the money is there. Some time shortly afterwards the money turns up in the victim’s account. The victim says okay and provides their PayPal details.Can you help me out? They'll send you the money on PayPal, then you can send it to to my bank account.” The attacker sends the victim a message from that hacked account, it will be something like: “I just sold something online and need to get paid, but something is wrong with my PayPal.These credentials are easily acquired given the huge volume of breached data online. One of the victim’s friends has their Facebook account hacked, using stolen login details acquired from the dark web.CyberNews has provided this explanation as to how the scam works, and an image (below) that shows the process in action.
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