Identifying Carding Patterns on

Carding Shops and Dark Net

Marketplaces
Ben Lazarine, Sagar Samtani, and Hsinchun Chen
IEEE Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI) 2018
Artificial Intelligence Lab, The University of Arizona
October 27, 2017
*This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under
Grant No. NSF DUE-1303362 (SFS) and NSF SES-1314631 (SaTC).*
Introduction
Global card fraud is expected to exceed $35.54 billion in 2020 (Kultur,
2016).

Hackers utilize carding shops and Dark Net Marketplaces to sell stolen
information like credit card information.

Research Objective: In this study, we aim to proactively combat

carding by identifying patterns that drive it.
Literature Review
Two major areas of literature are reviewed:
Carding shop and DNM research to understand what carding patterns have
already been identified

The analytical technique of regression analysis to understand how factors

impact prices of card listings on carding shops
Literature Review
Year Author Focus Dataset Analytical Results
Approach

2015 V. Benjamin Hacker Hacker Forums, IRCs, Text Analysis, Risk Successful identification
Community and Carding Shops measurement, and of examples of evidence
Content location analysis of threats related to
financial institutions and
government
2015 V. Bulakh Carding Carding listings from Extracting and Identification of rice
Shop rescator.cm, dumps.pw, analyzing factors drivers and financial
Information and 2pac.cc effect on price motivations for carding
2017 W. Li Carding Underground carding Sentiment Analysis Identifying and classifying
Community forums best malware sellers
sellers
Research Gaps and Questions
We identified several research gaps from our review:
There is limited research that identifies carding patterns on both carding
shops and DNMs

Based on these gaps, the following research questions are posed:

RQ1: What types of carding goods are on DNMs vs carding shops?
RQ2: What are the price differences of these goods?
RQ3: What factors affect the pricing of carding goods in both platforms?
Research Design
Carding Shop and DNM data

Platform Data Amount Sites collected Types of listings

Dark Net Market 1,393 4 Cards & CVV,
Dumps
Carding Shops 848,498 12 CVV, Dumps, SSN,
Sold
 Analytical Techniques
Platform Feature Description Example
Dark Net Market Subcategory What type of listing Carding Tutorial
Target Company Company affected Visa, eBay etc.
Location Area affected US, Germany
Carding Shops Target Company Bank of card Visa, Mastercard
Location Area of card US, Canada

Above we outline the types of features we have selected for

our regression analysis.

8
Next Steps
By Friday November 3rd we hope to have completed the data
processing phase of our research.
After completion of data processing we will begin our data analysis,
targeting completion by the end of the semester
Refrences
Kltr Y., & alayan M.U. (2017). Hybrid approaches for detecting credit card fraud. Expert Systems.
V. Benjamin, W. Li, T. Holt and H. Chen, "Exploring threats and vulnerabilities in hacker web: Forums, IRC and
carding shops," 2015 IEEE International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI), Baltimore,
MD, 2015, pp. 85-90.
V. Bulakh and M. Gupta. 2015. Characterizing Credit Card Black Markets on the Web. In Proceedings of the
24th International Conference on World Wide Web (WWW '15 Companion). ACM, New York, NY, pp. 1435-
1440.
W. Li, H. Chen, and J. F. Nunamaker Jr., Identifying and Profiling Key Sellers in Cyber Carding Community:
AZSecure Text Mining System, 2017 Journal of Management Information Systems, pp. 1059-1086.