Inside the underground fake review trade


Recently, our team exposed sophisticated scam kits designed to steal sensitive data and trick consumers. But underground marketplaces are not just for malware and stolen passwords. They also offer services designed to manipulate your opinion of the products and services you buy every day.

In our latest research, we examined cybercrime forums where sellers advertise illicit “reputation management” services. For the right price, these underground operators offer to flood a product with glowing, five-star ratings or remove negative reviews. This shadowy industry works both ways—artificially boosting reputations and deliberately hiding legitimate complaints.

A major shift we are seeing in this space is the adoption of new technology. We also found that cybercriminals are using AI to automate these fake review campaigns. This could allow them to quickly generate realistic, human-sounding feedback in large volumes without much manual effort.

Read more…
Source:  Malwarebytes Labs


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • Magniber ransomware actors used a variant of Microsoft SmartScreen bypass

    March 14, 2023

    Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) recently discovered usage of an unpatched security bypass in Microsoft’s SmartScreen security feature, which financially motivated actors are using to deliver the Magniber ransomware without any security warnings. The attackers are delivering MSI files signed with an invalid but specially crafted Authenticode signature. The malformed signature causes SmartScreen to return ...

  • Wymondham College hit by sophisticated cyber attack

    March 14, 2023

    Wymondham College said disruption was likely to continue until the Easter holidays due to its IT system being targeted. In a message sent to students, seen by the EDP, the college apologised for disruption but said it believed there had been no data breach. Read more… Source: Wymondham Evening News  

  • Microsoft fixes Windows zero-day exploited in ransomware attacks

    March 14, 2023

    Microsoft has patched another zero-day bug used by attackers to circumvent the Windows SmartScreen cloud-based anti-malware service and deploy Magniber ransomware payloads without raising any red flags. The attackers have been using malicious MSI files signed with a specially crafted Authenticode signature to exploit this security feature bypass vulnerability (tracked as CVE-2023-24880). Read more… Source: Bleeping Computer Related story: ...

  • Cyprus: Land registry website problems due to ‘cyber attack’

    March 12, 2023

    After a “thorough evaluation of all data”, the land registry department on Sunday said the technical problem that saw it go offline since Wednesday was due to a “cyber attack” The department said that due to the nature of the problem and the size of the systems, they will be gradually restored, starting with the restoration ...

  • “Massive” cyber attack crashes African Union’s system

    March 11, 2023

    Cyber attackers prey on the African Union (AU), resulting in the unscheduled suspension of its systems. The Reporter got a copy of an internal memo that said an attack on the AU data center started last week, making services and applications unavailable. Sources say that more than 200 corrupted devices have been found and are being ...

  • What happens if you ‘cover up’ a ransomware infection? For Blackbaud, a $3m charge

    March 10, 2023

    Blackbaud has agreed to pay $3 million to settle charges that it made misleading disclosures about a 2020 ransomware infection in which crooks stole more than a million files on around 13,000 of the cloud software slinger’s customers. According to America’s financial watchdog, the SEC, Blackbaud will cough up the cash – without admitting or denying ...