| Vladuz: Romanian storm over eBay |
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| Friday, 09 March 2007 | ||||
 There’s a danger threatening eBay: it is known as Vladuz and it apparently comes from Romania. The threat is a cracker. Over two months ago, the attacker know by the handle as Vladuz hacked eBay’s employee servers . From that moment on he has been continuously targeting eBay and mocking its security systems. As reported by The Register , several attacks can be linked to Vladuz who, still at the end of last month, carried out two attacks against the popular online auction website. Vladuz's technique to demonstrate that the attack had taken place, was to post notes on the customer service bulletin board using the same bold pink background used by eBay employees: in response to a post where eBay spokesman Hani Durzy declared that Vladuz didn’t enter eBay’s internal systems, the attacker wrote: “Durzy … lies all the time.” And he went on answering to a complaint for late replies: “I was very busy. Being hunted by eBay doesn’t leave you much free time.” In spite of the fact that , according to the company’s representatives, the attacks did not affect the network where crucial customer data is kept, their weight and frequency required an immediate counteraction by eBay that applied to no less than the FBI to pursue the attacker. The enquiry leads to Romania, where Vladuz is supposed to come from.eBay spokeswoman Catherine England would not give too much importance to this attacker who is just one among hundreds of fishers who try to hack the company every day. The real problem about this issue is not the single attack perpetrated by Vladuz, but the amount of fraudulent auctions that seems to accompany his activities. Indeed, since the end of January, they registered a hike in the number of auctions being offered, and then removed, from hour to hour. Vladuz and his clients are suspected to be responsible for these postings. According to eBay statistics there is a noticeable difference between auctions trends BEFORE and AFTER Vladuz emerged. This volatility is supposed to be imputable to a sort of “cat-and-mouse game” between fraudsters and eBay's security team: as soon as eBay team removes the fraudulent offerings, there’s someone who put them up again. In the past eBay used to blame users’ carelessness for the hijacking of trusted accounts, but now they found evidences on the involvement of Vladuz & Co. in many of these cases. Vladuz claims to be also the author of many tools and software such as a Firefox extension that he says automatically enters captcha image verification codes when making certain eBay transactions.
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