Data thieves are victims too

Websites that sold payment card information stolen from the Target breach were themselves hacked by unknown attackers.

“Hi subhumans and miscreants, your fraud site is gone now. Go away,” read the first line of a message posted on rescator.so and rescator.cm, two sites used as clearinghouses for credit card data stolen from retailers like Target, Neiman Marcus and Sally Beauty Holdings Inc. in recent months.

The message also ribbed cybersecurity blogger Brian Krebs, people who used the sites to buy credit cards and “regular fraudsters.”

While two of the sites were out, other versions of Rescator were still functioning, including rescator.cc and rescator.co, sites that ultimately point toward another site, octavian.su.

The Journal reports that “the message is punctuated with a YouTube video of Will Smith’s Men in Black music video from the 1997 sci-fi movie, about secret agents who monitor extraterrestrial activity on Earth.

“It’s unclear who’s behind the attack on the two sites. But Tommy Lee Jones’ character, Agent K, in the Men in Black movie delivers an appropriate message: ‘We are your best, last and only line of defense. We work in secret, we exist in shadow.’"

ThreatWatch is a regularly updated catalog of data breaches successfully striking every sector of the globe, as reported by journalists, researchers and the victims themselves.