
Visa's 24/7 War Room Takes On Global Cybercriminals
The numbers that the payments giant grapples with are enormous. Every year, $15 trillion flows through Visa's networks, representing roughly 15 percent of the world's economy. And bad actors constantly try to syphon off some of that money.
Modern fraudsters vary dramatically in sophistication.
To stay ahead, Visa has invested $12 billion over the past five years building AI-powered cyber fraud detection capabilities, knowing that criminals are also spending big.
"You have everybody from a single individual threat actor looking to make a quick buck all the way to really corporatized criminal organizations that generate tens or hundreds of millions of dollars annually from fraud and scam activities," Michael Jabbara, Visa's global head of fraud solutions, told AFP during a tour of the company's security campus.
"These organizations are very structured in how they operate."
The best-resourced criminal syndicates now focus on scams that directly target consumers, enticing them into purchases or transactions by manipulating their emotions.
"Consumers are continuously vulnerable. They can be exploited, and that's where we've seen a much higher incidence of attacks recently," Jabbara said.
The warning signs are clear: anything that seems too good to be true online is suspicious, and romance opportunities with strangers from distant countries are especially dangerous.
"What you don't realize is that the person you're chatting with is more likely than not in a place like Myanmar," Jabbara warned.
He said human-trafficking victims are forced to work in multi-billion-dollar cyber scam centers built by Asian crime networks in Myanmar's lawless border regions.
The most up-to-date fraud techniques are systematic and quietly devastating.
Once criminals obtain your card information, they automatically distribute it across numerous merchant websites that generate small recurring charges -- amounts low enough that victims may not notice for months.
Some of these operations increasingly resemble legitimate tech companies, offering services and digital products to fraudsters much like Google or Microsoft cater to businesses.
On the dark web, criminals can purchase comprehensive fraud toolkits.
"You can buy the software. You can buy a tutorial on how to use the software. You can get access to a mule network on the ground or you can get access to a bot network" to carry out denial-of-service attacks that overwhelm servers with traffic, effectively shutting them down.
Just as cloud computing lowered barriers for startups by eliminating the need to build servers, "the same type of trend has happened in the cyber crime and fraud space," Jabbara explained.
These off-the-shelf services can also enable bad actors to launch brute force attacks on an industrial scale -- using repeated payment attempts to crack a card's number, expiry date, and security code.
The sophistication extends to corporate-style management, Jabbara said.
Some criminal organizations now employ chief risk officers who determine operational risk appetite.
They might decide that targeting government infrastructure and hospitals generates an excessive amount of attention from law enforcement and is too risky to pursue.
To combat these unprecedented threats, Jabbara leads a payment scam disruption team focused on understanding criminal methodologies.
From a small room called the Risk Operations Center in Virginia, employees analyze data streams on multiple screens, searching for patterns that distinguish fraudulent activity from legitimate credit card use.
In the larger Cyber Fusion Center, staff monitor potential cyberattacks targeting Visa's own infrastructure around the clock.
"We deal with millions of attacks across different parts of our network," Jabbara noted, emphasizing that most are handled automatically without human intervention.
Visa maintains identical facilities in London and Singapore, ensuring 24-hour global vigilance.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Int'l Business Times
11 hours ago
- Int'l Business Times
Russian Forces Claim First Foothold In New Ukraine Region
Russia said Monday it captured its first village in Ukraine's central Dnipropetrovsk region after grinding towards the border for months, dealing a physchological blow for Kyiv as its worries mount. Moscow launched a fresh large-scale drone and missile barrage before the announcement, including on Ukraine's army recruitment centres, as part of an escalating series of attacks that come as ceasefire talks led by the United States stall. The Russian defence ministry said its forces captured the village of Dachne in the Dnipropetrovsk region, an important industrial mining territory that has also come under mounting Russian air attacks. Russian forces appear to have made crossing the border a key strategic objective over recent months, and deeper advances into the region could pose logistics and economic problems for Kyiv. Kyiv has so far denied any Russian foothold in Dnipropetrovsk. Moscow first said last month its forces had crossed the border, more than three years since launching its invasion and pushing through the neighbouring Donetsk region. Earlier Monday, Ukraine's army said its forces "repelled" attacks in Dnipropetrovsk, including "in the vicinity" of Dachne. Dnipropetrovsk is not one of the five Ukrainian regions -- Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea -- that Moscow has publicly claimed as Russian territory. Russia used its main city of Dnipro as a testing ground for its "experimental" Oreshnik missile in late 2024, claiming to have struck an aeronautics production facility. An AFP reporter in the eastern city of Kharkiv saw civilians with their belongings being evacuated from a residential building damaged during Russia's overnight attacks, and others sheltering with pets in a basement. At least four people were killed and dozens wounded across Ukraine, mostly in the Kharkiv region bordering Russia and in a late-morning attack on the industrial city of Zaphorizhzhia. "Air defence remains the top priority for protecting lives," President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media after the attacks, as fears mount over the continuing deliveries of US military aid. Zelensky said Ukraine was "strongly counting on our partners to fully deliver on what we have agreed". The air force said Moscow had launched 101 drones across the country and four missiles. Seventy-five of the drones were downed, it added. Attacks on Monday targeted two recruitment centres in separate cities wounding four people, the Ukrainian army said, in what appears to be a new trend following similar strikes over the weekend and last week. "These strikes are part of a comprehensive enemy operation aimed at disrupting mobilisation in Ukraine," Ukraine's Centre for Strategic Communications, a government-funded body, wrote on social media. It added that Russia had attacked recruitment centres last week in the cities of Kremenchuk, Kryvyi Rig, and Poltava. In Russia, the defence ministry said that it had shot down 91 Ukrainian drones overnight, including eight in the Moscow region, with the majority of the rest in regions bordering Ukraine. Civilians with their belongings were forced to shelter in a basement amid new air attacks AFP


Int'l Business Times
15 hours ago
- Int'l Business Times
North Korea Bars Western Influencers From Trade Fair Tour
North Korea has barred Western influencers from joining a delegation of tourists to an international trade fair in October, a China-based tour operator told AFP on Monday. Diplomatically isolated North Korea has welcomed sporadic groups of international visitors in recent months, including hundreds of foreign athletes in April for the first Pyongyang International Marathon in six years. China has historically been the biggest diplomatic, economic and political backer of North Korea, which remains under crippling international sanctions. Travel agency Young Pioneer Tours (YPT) said on Saturday it would take a group of foreign tourists on a trip to the authoritarian state from October 24 to November 1. However, the tour would not be open to journalists, travel content creators or influencers, the company said on its website. YPT co-founder Rowan Beard told AFP the curbs on creators were "a specific request from the North Korean side". "We anticipate that once the country officially reopens, there may be stricter scrutiny or limitations on influencers and YouTubers joining tours," Beard said. The company had "no visibility" on when Pyongyang would restart official media delegations, he said. Several online influencers have shared slickly produced videos from inside North Korea in recent months. Chad O'Carroll, founder of specialist website NK News, said many influencers tend to have larger audiences than professional journalists, but "they are normally working without editors and tend to gain extra views through sensationalist-style content". "North Korean authorities likely see few benefits and major risks with allowing social media influencers to visit the country, given what we saw earlier this year," O'Carroll told AFP. "The result is a community of potential visitors who, in DPRK authorities' minds, are not likely to produce content that is favourable to state interests," he said, using North Korea's official name. The YPT tour, priced at 3,995 euros ($4,704), will depart from the Chinese capital Beijing and take in the Pyongyang Autumn International Trade Fair, North Korea's biggest international business exhibition. Participants will have a "unique chance" to stroll through more than 450 trade booths exhibiting machinery, information technology, energy, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods and household items. YPT also said the Pyongyang Chamber of Commerce would "hold a VIP presentation for us for an in-depth overview and insights into the (North Korean) economy". The itinerary also includes major sights in Pyongyang as well as the first Western visit in more than five years to Mount Myohyang, which boasts a museum of lavish gifts presented to former North Korean leaders. Chinese people used to make up the bulk of foreign tourists and business visitors to the isolated nuclear nation before it sealed its borders during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, numbers have not rebounded despite Pyongyang's post-pandemic reopening, a trend that some analysts have attributed to Beijing's anger at North Korea's explicit support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.


Int'l Business Times
19 hours ago
- Int'l Business Times
The Strange Case Of Evgeniya Mayboroda, Russia's Rebel Retiree
The elegant 74-year-old Russian put her hand on her heart as the verdict fell. Five and a half years in prison for posts opposing the war in Ukraine. Then, according to a witness who saw her in the dock, "her nose began to bleed". Yet only a few years before, Evgeniya Mayboroda had been an ardent fan of Russian leader Vladimir Putin and had celebrated his annexation of Crimea. A photo taken in the court in Shakhty shows her shock as the sentence was pronounced -- her punishment held up as an example of what can happen to even model citizens if they question the war. Mayboroda -- who comes from the Rostov region bordering Ukraine -- was accused of sharing "false information" on the Russian army on social media and of "making a public appeal to commit extremist activities". Even before she was convicted in January 2024, the posts on her social media feed -- thick with pictures of cats and flowers -- had put her on the Russia's "terrorist and extremist" watchlist. Curious to discover how a pro-Kremlin pensioner could so quickly become an enemy of the state, AFP tracked her down to a penal colony where she said her faith and prayers were sustaining her. We also talked to those who know her and were able to piece together a picture of this unlikely rebel, whose strange story says much about today's Russia. Evgeniya Nikolaevna Mayboroda was born on June 10, 1951 near the coal-mining town of Shakhty and met her husband Nikolai at the local technical institute. They both got jobs at a facility just outside the city -- he was a miner in an elite squad, while she worked in the power station above ground. They had a son, Sergei, in 1972. The Mayborodas were the ideal Soviet family. As mine workers they occupied a privileged place in the communist hierarchy and were able to travel regularly across the Eastern Bloc. But when the USSR collapsed in 1991 so did their world. Not only was there no money to pay their wages but the socialist values they believed in were replaced by a wild, cowboy capitalism. Then on Miners' Day 1997, an important date in the Soviet calendar, Sergei, their only child was killed in a car accident. He was 25. "We were at the burial. Evgeniya was in such a state that she can't remember it," a friend of the family, too afraid to give her name, told AFP. "Her son was everything to her." The mine shut down in 2002 and, less than a decade later, her husband died after a sudden illness and Mayboroda found herself alone. She took refuge in religion and was soon back on her feet, again taking pride in her appearance. Photos show that even on a budget, she kept her sense of style, always with a little touch of mascara. "She is a leader in life," a friend said. "She is hard to break." At the end of 2017, she discovered social media and joined VK (Russia's equivalent to Facebook). Her page shows her political evolution. For five years she shared hundreds of pictures of cats and flowers, religious messages or nostalgic reminiscences about life in the good old USSR. And she was effusive in her praise of President Vladimir Putin, posting some 30 photos of him from March to August 2018, hailing him as a marvellous leader who was making Russia great again. In one of them, Putin tells Donald Trump that Russia would give Crimea back to Ukraine "if the United States gives Texas back to Mexico and Alaska back to Russia". She also called former Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko -- who accused Putin of having him poisoned -- a "moron". Like many Russians laid low by the crisis of the 1990s, Mayboroda was receptive to the Kremlin's rhetoric that Russia had regained its power and stability under Putin. Then something changed. In the summer of 2018, a sudden raising of the retirement age saw discontent with the government spread beyond the big cities. "Normally Putin, as a great popular leader, likes to position himself as referee, guaranteeing the interest of the people," said French sociologist Karine Clement, a specialist on Russian protest movements. "But this was the first time he spoke up to defend a reform that, let's say, went against the interests of the poor." While his popularity plummeted, there were no large protests. At around the same time, the mood of Mayboroda's posts about politics began to change. She started to share posts denouncing poverty in Russia, contrasting it with the country's vast natural resources. Tatyana Vasilchuk, a journalist from the independent outlet Novaya Gazeta, said the Maiski area where Mayboroda lived was wracked by neglect and unemployment when she visited. "It was drowning under rubbish," she said. In 2020, Mayboroda made clear her opposition to a change in the constitution allowing Putin to stay in power until 2036, reposting a message that said: "No to an eternal Putin... No to eternal lies and corruption." Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. "One of the motors" for Putin going to war, Clement said, was his need to silence opposition and "restore control". On her VK account, Mayboroda -- who had family in Ukraine -- criticised the invasion and even expressed support for the Azov Brigade, a Ukrainian unit founded by far-right militants. While some Azov members were neo-Nazis, its dogged resistance on the battlefield, particularly during the siege of Mariupol in 2022, won it hero status in Ukraine and recruits beyond ultranationalist groups. In Russia, where all opposition -- particularly online -- is tracked, her posts did not go unnoticed. The security services have locked up hundreds of people for criticising the conflict and Mayboroda's turn came in February 2023. Police raided her home and she got her first jail term and a fine. A more serious criminal investigation was also opened, which led to her conviction last year. Investigators accused her of criticising the Russian assault on Mariupol in which thousands of besieged Ukrainians died. They also said she reposted a disturbing video in which a young girl, sat in front of a screen showing a swastika, holds a knife and declares in Ukrainian that Russians should have their throats cut. The video seems to support the Kremlin line that Russia had gone into Ukraine to fight "neo-Nazis", playing on the admiration some Ukrainian nationalist groups have for those who fought with the Germans against Soviet leader Joseph Stalin during World War II. Mayboroda was accused of being a Nazi for reposting the video, which had in fact been published by a pro-Kremlin account on VK. Ukraine's SBU security service claim the clip was part of a Russian "propaganda campaign". "She does not support that ideology," a source close to the case told AFP. Mayboroda, who regularly crossed the border to visit her Ukrainian relatives before the war, told the court that one was wounded in a Russian strike on a building in Dnipro in the summer of 2022. Yet at the time Mayboroda did not see how dangerous her online comments were, a friend told AFP. She compared the pensioner to a "lost lamb" who she still loved despite being "in the wrong". Expert Clement said she could understand how Mayboroda became politicised once she saw through the Kremlin line. Beyond prosecuting its opponents, the Kremlin tries to "scramble minds" with a fog of often contradictory disinformation to stop "the forming of mass political movements", Clement said. This strategy of confusion allows it to present the invasion as "a fight against Nazism", she added, even though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish. Russians are cynical about politics after watching oligarchs present their ultraliberal reforms that robbed the poor in the 1990s as an advance toward "democracy", the expert argued, a distrust which now works in favour of Putin's authoritarianism. "You have to be very smart to navigate public life in Russia," she said, adding that a "thirst for community" was part of the reason why so many have got behind the war. Despite that, Mayboroda's plight has garnered attention from opposition media and NGOs both in Russia and in exile. The banned group Memorial quickly recognised her as a "political prisoner", and Kremlin critics said her jailing showed the growing intensity of repression. Unlike thousands of Ukrainian prisoners who human rights groups say are being held in secret and sometimes tortured, as a Russian citizen Mayboroda's prison conditions are much better. Theoretically she can receive letters, though censored by prison authorities, and occasionally make phone calls. In June, after a six-month wait, AFP was able to talk to her during a mediated and recorded 10-minute call from her prison in the Rostov region. During the spring her friends said she was depressed and unwell. But her tone during this call was surprisingly upbeat given she has been behind bars for 18 months. "The hardest thing for me was losing my freedom. It's very hard... But my faith and prayers help me," she told AFP, her voice sometimes cut by the crackly line. Asked why she reshared the video of the girl calling for Russians to be killed, she said "it happened by accident. It was stupid." She insisted that she detested "hate" and "lies", and that she believed in "love and the joy of living". Her opposition to the war was on simple moral grounds, she said. "I am a (Christian) believer. Thou shalt not kill." Nor could she see why the invasion had to happen. "Why all this? I don't understand." A residential building in Dnipro, Ukraine destroyed by a Russian strike in 2023 AFP Forty-one people went on hunger strike in Shakhty in 2004 reclaiming unpaid wages from coal giant Rostov Ugol (Rostov Coal), which ran mines in the city AFP A woman holds a smartphone bearing an image of Russian President Vladimir Putin at a rally of his supporters in 2016 AFP Social media platform VK (formerly VKontakte), Russia's equivalent to Facebook AFP Evgeniya Mayboroda's nose began to bleed as the verdict was read AFP