The FBI warns the public about criminals targeting US stock investors through social media platforms and messaging service applications (apps). The scheme, known as a “ramp-and-dump” stock manipulation, targets US investors through online engagement, often via social media advertisements or messages promoting an “investment club” of fellow investors, some of which may be bots or fake accounts.
These promotions typically direct victims to secure messaging apps where the group operates. To appear credible, perpetrators may impersonate legitimate brokerage firms or well-known stock analysts. They secretly control a large volume of a low-priced stock and coordinate efforts to inflate its price (“ramp up”) by encouraging investment club members to purchase shares over a period of several weeks or months. Once the price is artificially elevated, the criminals sell off (“dump”) their shares at a profit, leaving unsuspecting investors with significant losses as the stock value collapses.
Read more…
Source: U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Cyber Division
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest news and insights delivered right to your inbox.
Related:
- Billions of records belonging to CVS Health exposed online
June 16, 2021
In another example of misconfigured cloud services impacting security, billions of records belonging to CVS Health have been exposed online. On Thursday, WebsitePlanet, together with researcher Jeremiah Fowler, revealed the discovery of an online database belonging to CVS Health. The database was not password-protection and had no form of authentication in place to prevent unauthorized entry. Upon ...
- The AN0M fake secure chat app may have been too clever for its own good
June 14, 2021
Late last week, FBI International Operations Division legal attaché for Australia Anthony Russo added another important piece of information: speaking to Australian newspapers he said one reason for discontinuing use of AN0M was that it produced too much intelligence. “The volume was increasing at a scale and our ability to resource it and monitoring ...
- JBS Paid $11M to REvil Gang Even After Restoring Operations
June 10, 2021
JBS Foods paid the equivalent of $11 million in ransom after a cyber-attack that forced the company to shut down some operations in the United States and Australia over the Memorial Day weekend. The company made the payment to cybercriminals to ensure the protection of its data and mitigate any further damage to its customers, as ...
- 800 Criminals Arrested In Biggest Ever Law Enforcement Operation Against Encrypted Communication
June 8, 2021
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Dutch National Police (Politie), and the Swedish Police Authority (Polisen), in cooperation with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and 16 other countries have carried out with the support of Europol one of the largest and most sophisticated law enforcement operations to date in the fight against ...
- FBI Claws Back Millions of DarkSide’s Ransom Profits
June 7, 2021
United States law enforcement has clawed back approximately $2.3 million of the ransom allegedly paid to DarkSide by Colonial Pipeline last month, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI announced in a joint press conference on Monday. “Today we turned the tables on DarkSide,” FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said in live-streamed remarks. They seized the money ...
- REvil Ransomware Gang Spill Details on US Attacks
June 4, 2021
Cybercriminals behind the JBS Foods ransomware attack claim they had no intent to target United States-based firms. The group, identified as the Sodinokibi REvil ransomware gang, also said it was not afraid of being labeled a cyber-terrorist group. A spokesperson for REvil shared its positions in an interview on a YouTube and Telegram channel called Russian ...