{"id":53306,"date":"2022-12-23T11:14:47","date_gmt":"2022-12-23T03:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=53306"},"modified":"2022-12-23T11:14:50","modified_gmt":"2022-12-23T03:14:50","slug":"cybercriminals-scam-each-other-out-of-millions-of-dollars-sophos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2022\/12\/23\/cybercriminals-scam-each-other-out-of-millions-of-dollars-sophos\/","title":{"rendered":"Cybercriminals scam each other out of millions of dollars – Sophos"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sophos<\/a>, a global leader in innovating and delivering cybersecurity as a service, announced in the first of a four-part series, \u201cThe Scammers Who Scam Scammers on Cybercrime Forums<\/a>,\u201d that cybercriminals are scamming each other out of millions of dollars and use arbitration to settle disputes about the scams. The report also reveals how attackers use classic techniques\u2014some decades old, such as typosquatting, phishing, backdoored malware, and fake marketplaces\u2014to carry out their scams against each other.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For this report, Sophos X-Ops<\/a> experts investigated Exploit and XSS, two Russian-language cybercrime forums that provide Access-as-a-Service (AaaS) listings, and BreachForums, an English-language cybercrime forum and marketplace specializing in data leaks. All three sites have dedicated arbitration rooms. Despite this resolution process provoking occasional mayhem among the \u201cplaintiffs and defendants,\u201d with some accused criminals either going dark and not showing up, or calling the complainants themselves \u201crippers,\u201d the practice of scammers scamming scammers is lucrative. During a 12-month period, Sophos examined approximately 600 scams that resulted in threat actors losing more than $2.5 million to each other, just on these three forums\u2014with claims ranging from $2 to $160,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile investigating cybercriminal scams, we stumbled upon an entire sub-economy that includes not just lower-tier criminals, but some of the most prominent ransomware groups. And these scams aren\u2019t always just financially motivated. Personal beefs and rivalries were common. We also found incidents where scammers would scam the scammers who scammed them. In one case, we found a trolling contest set up to get revenge on a scammer trying to trick users into paying $250 to join a fake underground forum. The \u2018winner\u2019 of the contest received $100,\u201d said Matt Wixey, senior threat researcher, Sophos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sophos also discovered that the arguments and arbitration process left behind a wealth of untapped intelligence that security professionals and law enforcement could leverage to better understand and defend against cybercriminal behaviors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause criminals often need to offer up a lot of evidence when reporting the scams that they themselves have fallen victim to, they provide a wealth of tactical and strategic information about their operations\u2014something which has been an untapped resource until now. These arbitration reports also give us an inside look at attackers\u2019 priorities, their rivalries and alliances, and, ironically, how they\u2019re susceptible to the same types of deception used against their victims,\u201d said Wixey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read part one of the four-part series on \u201cThe Scammers who Scam Scammers on Cybercrime Forums\u201d on Sophos.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Attackers use classic techniques \u2013 typosquatting, phishing, backdoored malware, fake marketplaces, and much more \u2013 to scam each other; sub-economy in just 3 cybercriminal forums generated more than $2.5 million in 12 months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":47557,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[286,54,2103,206,96,2727,1656],"class_list":["post-53306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-white-papers","tag-it-security","tag-security","tag-security-breach","tag-sophos","tag-technology","tag-technology-adaption","tag-technology-investment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}