Practical Fraud Prevention

Chapter 13. Account Takeover

All of me, why not take all of me…

Gerald Marks and Seymour Simons¹

We’ve mentioned account takeover (ATO) so many times already in this book that it’s a relief to arrive at the chapter where we can really dive in! We saved it for this part of the book because while ATO is a common attack method against all industries, it’s both particularly serious and, via social engineering and malware, particularly common in banking.

The reason ATO has come up so often already, of course, is because it’s such a prominent attack tool in the fraudster toolbox. Gaining access to a victim’s account opens up a huge range of possibilities for a creative fraudster. For this reason, though it’s often an end in itself—meaning ATO is carried out solely to facilitate fraudulent transactions—it’s also sometimes simply one step in a more complex plan that may involve many different fraudster tactics. This is especially true with ATO attacks against banks, but it can happen in ecommerce stores and marketplaces as well.

Note

This chapter is about account takeover, which occurs when a fraudster hacks into an account and starts to leverage it; it’s not about account handover, which occurs when a previously respectable account is handed over voluntarily to a fraudster, usually either after a period of account aging or as a way to cash out a little before declaring bankruptcy. Account handover can cause considerable chaos, particularly in terms of money laundering but also on online ...