A Romanian word used as a password embedded into a code that was used to steal credit card data in a Subway store in New Hampshire back in 2010 helped an US secret agent link a case of credit card data theft to Romania.

U.S. Secret Service Agent Matt O’Neill had been investigating a series of credit car data theft and found the word Carabus – the Romanian for beetle – inside a password for a malware soft within the computer at the Subway store, according to a recent story on Bloomberg. He then linked the case he was working on to Romania.

The Romanians were using various computers to download the data they were stealing off various US stores. Despite masking their identities by using anonymous e-mail and chat accounts and routing everything through other servers in Europe, they were still exchanging e-mails in Romanian, so agent O'Neill managed to track some of their computer activity back to the country.

The group was stealing the credit card data and re-selling it, while being surveyed by the Secret Service, which wanted to end the criminal organization with a bust.

„Finally, in late October, agents picked up a solid lead: in an online chat, a hacker mentioned that his computer had been seized and his house raided by Romanian police investigating his cyber activities,” according to Bloomberg. The hacker was Adrian Tiberiu Oprea, a 26-year-old who had studied computer science and lived in the Black Sea port city of Constanta.

This first discovery led to unmasking two other members of the crime group. All three ended up pleading guilty for hitting more than 800 US stores, out of which 250 were Subway shops.

The full story on Bloomberg here.

editor@romania-insider.com