The thieves have been after RAM and other hardware for a while now. A manufacturer is now making changes to protect the hardware from fraudsters. Whether this really helps is another question.
What has Corsair done? Corsair has been selling its DDR5 product line under the “Vengeance” brand in new packaging since early January 2026. This is reported by Corsair in its own blog post. Instead of the familiar yellow cardboard boxes like in the title image, clear plastic packaging is now being used. This is supposed to have several advantages:
- The contents of the packaging are now immediately recognizable. If fraudsters switch the contents, it’s quicker to detect than with a sealed box.
- The manufacturer has also placed a tamper-proof label on the flap packaging. The security seal surrounds the flap packaging and tears when opened, so thieves cannot open and reseal it.
- For the RAM modules that continue to be delivered in cardboard packaging, Corsair has also added a security label to increase protection.
Allegedly better protection for buyers and sellers
What is the aim? With these changes, they primarily want to combat several types of fraud that have been causing problems for a while:
A particularly “popular” scam is return fraud, where fraudsters buy DDR5 memory, substitute modules of other types, such as DDR4 or old DDR2, or dummy modules and then return them to the retailer. In the worst case, the retailer does not notice, so the next customer receives the wrong memory and wonders. With graphics cards, models are also often secretly swapped by fraudsters.
Whether these measures will actually help against return fraud is questionable. Because often, employees in warehouses do not recognize whether it is real hardware or a counterfeit. And as long as this knowledge is lacking, fraud will likely continue to be successful.
Furthermore, RAM is lightly constructed and small compared to other components, making it relatively easy to steal. It goes so far that thieves even target display items that sellers showcase to present their hardware. You can read more about it on MeinMMO: RAM has become so expensive that users are becoming quite brazen: they steal it directly from the computers in the store
