Security News > 2021 > May > Fintech Startup Offers $500 for Payroll Passwords

Fintech Startup Offers $500 for Payroll Passwords
2021-05-10 14:25

One financial startup that's targeting the gig worker market is offering up to $500 to anyone willing to hand over the payroll account username and password given to them by their employer, plus a regular payment for each month afterwards in which those credentials still work.

On its blog, Argyle imagines a world in which companies choose to integrate its application platform interface and share their employee payroll data.

"At Argyle, we are intimately familiar with how likely someone is to know the password for their employment account or payroll system, because we've seen hundreds of thousands of users successfully provide their credentials," Argyle's Billy Mardsen wrote on Apr.

These sites, which seemed to be grouped around a recent recruitment effort variously called "Workers United," "UniteAtWork," "WageCompete" and "CommonGrounds," indicate that Argyle's platform has been pivotal in a slew of campaigns paying employees at specific companies up to $100 for their payroll account passwords.

'WE DO THINGS OTHERS DARE NOT DO'. Steve Friedl, an IT consultant in the payroll service bureau industry, said it appears Argyle has been paying people to help them refine their API and data scraping technology.

KrebsOnSecurity contacted multiple high-level sources at major companies whose login pages are shown in these payroll connect programs running on Argyle's platform.


News URL

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/05/fintech-startup-offers-500-for-payroll-passwords/