Kaspersky Lab reported an increase in online fraud on social media (Topic)

Kaspersky Lab claims that the actions of Internet scammers have already gone far beyond the scope of regular mail spam. At the same time, the most large-scale hacker activity was observed quite recently, and its field of activity covered mainly social networks and instant messengers. Often, users themselves become a bit of a hacker, unintentionally sending fraudulent messages among their virtual contacts.

Each messenger has its own schemes

The Lab's experts noticed that scammers most often use the WhatsApp platform to post their viral messages. The standard "bait" is the newsletter about bonus offers and invalid lotteries. Thus, fraudsters could represent themselves on behalf of common brands and brands, offering favorable terms on behalf of a popular company. For example, a user was offered to take a small survey and send a newsletter to his contacts inside the resource.

At the same time, a simple transfer did not complete the case. After a user sent a malicious link to his contacts, he himself was redirected to another page, the content of which often depended on the type of device and the user's location. If WhatsApp was logged in from a smartphone, then with a high degree of probability the user got to the resource of paid services, some kind of poll or rally, with the help of which personal data is collected. Another way was the option with a proposal to install an additional browser extension, which is later used to intercept the entered information.

The scammers have a different scheme for Twitter. On this resource, fake pages of famous people and popular companies are often created, on whose behalf messages are sent with the possibility of free access to cryptocurrency. To receive it, you just need to transfer a few of your own virtual coins to a certain crypto wallet, and then collect the amount several times more. Although such offers coming from “Elon Musk himself” seem more suspicious than profitable, such schemes often become effective after loud news.

Scammers are switching to cryptocurrencies

Internet fraudsters are increasingly interested in virtual money. According to Kaspersky Lab, over the recent period, the anti-phishing anti-virus system was able to stop about 58,000 attempts to switch to fake cryptocurrency exchanges. Also, the Laboratory's experts noticed that phishing sites acquired advertisements in popular search engines. Most often, cybercriminals work with the virtual currency Etherium. According to the Laboratory, based on more than a thousand pseudo-crypto wallets, the scammers managed to “earn” more than two million dollars using this scheme.

According to the Laboratory, in the second quarter of 2018, they managed to stop many more conversions to fake pages than in the previous quarter. The company's analysts attribute this growth to an underestimation of the danger of such a fraudulent scheme, inattention, and a lack of knowledge about such actions by cybercriminals.

The Topic of Article: Kaspersky Lab reported an increase in online fraud on social media.
Author: Jake Pinkman