Carding
The underground trade in stolen card data, covering everything from the breach to the goods that are bought and resold at the end of the chain.
The business runs on division of labour. Someone steals the data through skimming, a network intrusion or malware in a checkout page. Someone else sells it on a forum or a shop. A third party tests which cards still work, and a fourth buys goods that can be flipped for cash. The jargon distinguishes dumps, magstripe track 2 data that can be written onto a blank card, from CVVs, card numbers with security codes for online purchases. Fullz come with the victim's whole identity attached.
CarderPlanet, founded in Ukraine in 2001, turned it into an organised market with escrow services and seller ratings. ShadowCrew was taken down by the US Secret Service in 2004, and Joker's Stash retired voluntarily in 2021 after selling an estimated billion dollars' worth of cards. Chip cards made dumps far less valuable, so the trade has moved to card-not-present fraud.