Cyber-Thieves Make Millions from Emissions Cap-and-Trade Scam

Phishing for carbon credits apparently pays

By Jeremy Hsu Posted 02.04.2010 at 12:38 pm 7 Comments

Oil Refinery A cap and trade scam has temporarily shut down much trading of European emissions allowances Wikimedia

Whatever the views on cap-and-trade systems for greenhouse gas emissions, everyone can agree that it doesn't work when cyber-thieves fraudulently obtain and resell the carbon credits. The mysterious culprits behind a "phishing" scam managed to make millions off of European allowances that permit companies to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases per year, according to Der Spiegel.

Phishing is that age-old Internet ruse where a fake but convincing email asks users to log onto a website and reenter their user name and password. That website is a decoy site set up for the purpose of snagging the unwary Internet user's log-in info.

In this case, hackers sent emails to companies in Europe, Japan and New Zealand last week that appeared to come from the German Emissions Trading Authority (DEHSt), a part of the European Union's Emission Trading System. The email said that the end users had to log onto the agency's website and reregister to prevent hacker attacks, in no small irony.

The shadowy group used the log-in info from various companies to quickly transfer the emissions allowances to other accounts in Denmark and Britain before reselling them. Financial Times Deutschland estimated at least nine cases of such fraud in Germany alone, with one German company losing allowances worth $2.1 million.

Criminals have proven more than willing to exploit the new energy economy. Italian authorities continue to investigate whether the Mafia sank about 30 ships as acts of illegal nuclear waste disposal. And more recently, thieves have made off with solar panels worth thousands of dollars from California wineries in Napa Valley.

The DEHSt has suspended registration of new trades for now, and various European nations also temporarily shut down their emissions trading. We suspect that authorities and companies alike will be taking the time to try and become more Internet-savvy.

[via Der Spiegel]

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7 Comments

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Mycellium

02/04/10 at 2:40 pm

Tsk, Tsk
What is the world coming to, is there no honor among thieves anymore. Thieves stealing from thieves. It's just wrong. The next thing you know people will be lying to shady used car salesman, or burglarizing a burglar's house while he's out burgling someone else. It's just shameful.

Mark my words this is the end of the world as we know it (literally) if we don't stop stealing from the poor innocent cap and trade billionaires who act only out of a desire to help and protect us from ourselves and may be make a tidy sum as they do it, why not.

This is almost certainly the work of a dedicated group of the 70-something year old tea partier's with mad hacking skills and the time afforded by a fat social security check they have brought down the new world green economy. Somehow I always knew it would end this way. The geriatricapocolypse has come. Make your time.

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Dustin2127

02/04/10 at 8:57 pm

hm.... agree with the thieves stealing from thieves bit, and I believe that this system of cap and trade was made for, well, money. Are these factories and power plants producing any less CO2? No, but the gov't is making a nice profit off of it now. This is completely unnecessary and is destroying U.S. industry.

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oereye

02/04/10 at 9:20 pm

Fraudsters defrauding fraudsters... there's a more serious point though. The phishing attack is not an isolated scam - a report by Europol in December 2009 found that up to 90% of the trades on some EU carbon exchanges were down to VAT "carousel" fraud. The underlying problem is that carbon trading renders a whole set of incommensurable practices equivalent in order to make a single tradable commodity, and throws the whole system together into a market where it is then unclear what is being traded (see www.carbontradewatch.org/carbon-trade-fails ). The resulting system is a scammers' paradise, which could better be avoided by turning to more conventional regulation as a means to limit carbon emissions.

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Meshca

02/04/10 at 10:02 pm

wow there was an anime on this exact issue...Shangri-la i think. what a coincidence.

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matt1q2aw3

02/04/10 at 10:17 pm

Talking about Al Gore right? This guy stands to make millions from this cap and trade non-sense.

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zimb.man

02/04/10 at 10:56 pm

There can be no better illustration of the futility of attempting to impose this cap and trade absurdity. Instead, we should be focusing on man's ability to innovate, adapt, and to turn systems to our own use...as shown by the thieves.

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bdhoro87

from coral gables, fl

02/06/10 at 11:51 pm

Wow this will be great for the economy! It will produce new jobs in the anti-cap-and-trade-hacking industry!