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“Looking back at the 1990s and early 2000s, you needed to have a reasonable level of technical competence to pull these types of crimes,” said CNBC Nicolas Court, Assistant Director for Financial Crime and the Interpol anti-corruption center.
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Experts expanding the networks of cybercrime markets are facilitated by what to become professional fraud, creating unprecedented cybersecurity threats worldwide, experts warn.
Cybercriminals are often reflected in popular media as Islands and highly qualified people who have coding and hacking abilities from a dull room. But such stereotypes become outdated.
“Looking back at the 1990s and early 2000s, you needed to have a reasonable level of technical competence to pull out these types of crimes,” says CNBC Nicholas Court, Assistant Director for Financial Crimes and Corruption Interpol.
Today, the barriers have fallen “quite significantly”, the court said. For example, receiving personal data, such as email addresses and sending them spam -messages – one of the oldest coloring in the book – has never been easier.
Cybersecurity experts say that changes are related to the achievements of the scam technology and the growth of organized Internet market, where examinations and resources on cybercrime are bought and sold.
A growing economy of cybercrime
“The last decade or so that the evolution of cybercriminals into organized groups and networks that are included in the prosperous underground economy,” said Tony Bernside, Vice President and Head of the Asia Pacific in the Netskope, Cloud Anty.
Management of this trend was the emergence of world underground markets that offer “cybercrimination as a service” or “caas”, through which suppliers charge customers for different types of malware and cybercrime services, he added.
Examples CAAS include ransom and hacking tools, botnet The rent, stolen and everything else that can help cybercriminals in their prohibited activity.
“The availability of these services certainly helps to ensure more cybercriminals, which allows them to scale and refine their crime while reducing the necessary technical examination,” Burnside said.
CAAS is often held in the markets in “Darknet” – part of the Internet that uses encryption technology to protect the anonymity of users.
Examples include the Abacus, Torzon Market and Styx market, although the best markets often change when the authorities close them and new ones appeared.
Burnside adds that the criminal gangs operating in the CAAS services have started acting as “legal organizations in their structure and processes”.
Meanwhile, suppliers on these illegal exchanges usually accept payments only in cryptocurrency in attempts to remain unknown, incomprehensible revenues and evading detection.
Silk roadThe sadly famous internet market, which was closed by law enforcement agencies in 2013, is recognized by many as one of the earliest large -scale cryptocurrency applications.
Darknet comes out of shadows
Although the use of cryptocurrencies in the cybercrime market may help to obscure the identity of the participants, it can also make its activity more trace on the blockchain, according to Chainalysis, a research firm that traces the illegal crypto.
According to Chanalysis, while the Darknet markets remain the main factor in the world ecosystem of cybercriminals, more activities go into public Internet and safe messaging services such as Telegram.
The largest of these market, defined by Chainalysis, is the Huena-Platform guarantee associated with the Cambodian Huione Group conglomerate, the firm says it acts as a “single stop for every form of cybercrime”.
The Chinese platform is acted as a peer market where providers offer services that network analysis is related to illegal activities, such as money laundering and scammers.
Suppliers pay for advertising on the Huione website, often sending stakeholders to private telegrams. When the sale is sold, the huena appears to be a deposit and dispute to “guarantee” the exchange.
Senization data shows that Huione guarantee providers have processed a staggering $ 70 billion of kryptos since 2021. Meanwhile, the elliptical, other Blockchain analytics company suggests that Huione Group has received at least $ 89 billion in the Cryptus, which makes it “The largest in history is illegal online market.“
The platform advertises and directs potential buyers to the suppliers on the telegram that offer everything from the technology of scam and money laundering to support and prohibited goods.
Judging by the scale and volume of the Huione guarantee, it probably uses numerous organized criminal groups, according to Andrew Ferman, head of national security intelligence in Chainlaysis.
However, it adds that many services do not cost a lot of money, providing a low entry barrier and cyber access points for “those who have an internet connection”.
According to Chainalysis, people seeking to ease “romance” or investment scams can acquire the necessary tools and services in Huione in just a couple of hundred dollars. Costs can reach thousands of dollars, depending on the level of complexity they seek to fulfill.
Investments or romance involve fraud to establish relationships with victims through social media or dating applications, intending to get rid of money through a false investment opportunity.
A fraudster trying to remove this type of scam can make Huione’s guarantee for potential victims’ data portfolio, such as phone numbers; Old accounts in social media, which seem to be from real people; And the software for manipulation on the face and voice manipulators that the fraud can use a scammer for digital masking.
Other goods and services on the site include fake investment and gambling platforms that scammers try to fool the victims for their contributions.
In refusing responsibility on its site, the platform states that it does not participate and does not understand the specific business of its customers and is responsible only for guaranteeing payments between buyers and sellers, the Chinese CNBC said.
According to Ferman, Huione Grournic appears to be concentrated in Cambodia and China, but there is evidence that there are other platforms.
“Child Game”
As the Caas and Cybercrime markets continue to grow, the technology offered and used by criminal providers is also advanced, which allows more sophisticated scale scams – with less effort, experts say.
According to Kim-Hock, the CEO of Wizlynx Group, generated by Deepfake video and voice cloning are increasingly real, with previously impossible attacks realistically thanks to AI generative promotion.
Last year, Hong Kong police reported The fact that the financial worker of the multinational firm was deceived in paying $ 25 million by cheaters using Deepfake technology to submit the company’s main financial director in the video conference.
“It would be completely impossible to pull out only a few years ago, even for criminals with technical skills, and now it is a viable attack even for those who do not have,” Burnside Netcope added.
Meanwhile, cybersecurity experts said CNBC that AI’s tools can be used to improve phishing and social engineering, helping to write more personalized and similar messages.
“It has become a children’s game to create truly convincing fake emails, audio, images or videos designed for scammers and deceived the victims,” Burnside said, noting that the dark variants of legitimate AI generative instruments continue to find their way in the dark markets.
Efforts to prevent prevention
From the global and anonymous nature of CAAS suppliers and cybercrime markets, they are very difficult for the police, cybersecurity experts said CNBC, noting that markets are often closed under different names or replaced.
For this reason, Interpol says in Nikolasov’s court that cybercrime is not a type of activity “you can arrest your exit”.
“The volume of crime is so fast that law enforcement agencies are actually more difficult to catch the same fate of cybercriminals,” he said, adding that it requires considerable attention to prevention and public information companies to prevent the rapid sophistication of cheatrs and instruments.
“Almost everyone receives messages about the scam these days. Although it was enough to tell people not to send money to the one who refuses to the video, this is not enough.”
At the level of the Leow Group Leow, the Leow Group says that as cybercrime becomes more technological and AI-Savvy, so there must be cybersecurity protocols.
For example, AI tools can be used to automate the security systems at the enterprise level, reducing the threshold to detect and accelerate the response time, he added.
Meanwhile, there are new tools such as “Dark monitoring online“Cybercrime markets and underground markets for leakage or stolen data, including powers, financial data and intellectual property.
Louu said that “it was never easier” to make cyberclass, so it is very important to prioritize in the field of cybersecurity, putting in technological solutions and increasing the awareness of employees, Leu said.
