Shocking information! It seems that you simply can not belief criminals.
That’s apparent, in fact, however perhaps criminals themselves are additionally responsible of being somewhat too trusting of others – and getting scammed because of this.
Researchers at Sophos offered an investigation at Black Hat Europe this week into so-called “metaparasites” – the scammers who rip-off different scammers.
Sophos’s Matt Wixey and Angela Gunn described their analysis as:
“…a novel investigation into scammers who scam scammers and hackers who hack hackers, on three of the most well-established and prominent criminal marketplaces. We examine the size of this shadowy multi-million-dollar ecosystem; the motivations of metaparasites; how arbitration processes work; and what influence metaparasites have on the culture and operations of the marketplaces in which they operate.”
And there’s some huge cash to be made by focusing on cybercriminals.
According to Sopbos, cybercriminals have misplaced over US $2.5 million to different scammers within the final 12 months, in simply three underground boards.
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Scams can take a number of types, together with pretend information leaks, blackmail, backdoored malware, and phishing.
The researchers even discovered 20 web sites that had been created to mimic prison marketplaces, “intended to trick users into forking over a $100 ‘activation fee.’”
Oh expensive, what a disgrace, by no means thoughts.
And, maybe unsurprisingly, there’s even proof that some scammers who’ve been scammed go on to get their revenge by scamming the very individuals who scammed them (I hope you’re following this on the again…)
The drawback of cybercriminals conning different cybercriminals has change into so important that underground boards even have devoted “arbitration rooms,” the place disagreements might be aired with the hope of decision.
So, all of that is very amusing. And we like the concept cybercriminals are conning one another fairly than spending all their time focusing on the harmless public – however is there the rest good that comes from this?
According to the researchers, sure there’s:
“Metaparasites, inadvertently, provide an intelligence boon to analysts, allowing us to gain unprecedented insights into sales, operations, negotiations, and identifiers which would otherwise remain hidden – as well as into marketplace culture, differing levels of operational security, and susceptibilities to deception and social engineering.”
But we shouldn’t snicker too heartily, the researchers warn: “It’s not just threat actors at risk – also inexperienced researchers, journalists, the generally curious.”
Just as long as these exploring and researching the cybercriminal tradition don’t get duped themselves, I suppose get somewhat consolation from the thought that cybercriminals are busy scamming one another fairly than us.
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