Credit card fraud "power users" with programming skills and no fear are making it easier for newbies to break into white collar crime, according to a report from the Honeynet Research Alliance this week.

The report draws on data gathered earlier this year when a fraudster looking for a random host to put between himself and IRC wound up cracking a research honeypot maintained by students and faculty at Azusa Pacific University, as part of a loosely affiliated gaggle of deliberately hackable hosts and networks organized around the non-profit Honeynet Project.

Researchers secretly monitored the intruder as he joined an IRC channel on DALnet dedicated to obtaining, verifying and swapping credit card numbers, along with matching names, addresses, and everything else a good carder needs to begin ordering goods and services illicitly.

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