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:

  • Probing Weaponized Chat Applications Abused in Supply-Chain Attacks

    December 14, 2022

    In late September 2022, threat researchers uncovered a supply-chain attack carried out by malicious actors using a trojanized installer of Comm100, a chat-based customer engagement application. Trend Micro investigation of the incident revealed that the breadth and depth of the campaign’s impact were greater than what the researchers had initially thought; Trend Micro researchers also ...

  • Hackers exploit critical Citrix ADC and Gateway zero day, patch now

    December 13, 2022

    Citrix strongly urges admins to apply security updates for an ‘Critical’ zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2022-27518) in Citrix ADC and Gateway that is actively exploited by state-sponsored hackers to gain access to corporate networks. This new vulnerability allows an unauthenticated attacker to execute commands remotely on vulnerable devices and take control over them. Citrix is warning admins to install ...

  • CISA Updates Advisory on #StopRansomware: Cuba Ransomware

    December 13, 2022

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and CISA have updated joint Cybersecurity Advisory AA22-335A: #StopRansomware: Cuba Ransomware, originally released on December 01, 2022. The advisory has been updated to include additional indicators of compromise (IOCs). CISA encourages organizations to review the latest update to AA22-335A and apply the recommended mitigations. Read more… Source: U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security ...

  • Researchers smell a cryptomining Chaos RAT targeting Linux systems

    December 13, 2022

    A type of cryptomining malware targeting Linux-based systems has added capabilities by incorporating an open source remote access trojan called Chaos RAT with several advanced functions that bad guys can use to control remote operating systems. Trend Micro security researchers discovered the threat last month. Like earlier, similar versions of the miner that also target Linux ...

  • New Fortinet bug under active exploitation

    December 13, 2022

    Fortinet has warned customers to patch immediately against a new vulnerability it said is under active exploitation. The critical-rated vulnerability exists in a VPN product, FortiOS SSL-VPN. In its advisory, the company said the bug is a heap-based buffer overflow. Read more… Source: IT News  

  • IIS modules: The evolution of web shells and how to detect them

    December 12, 2022

    Web exploitation and web shells are some of the most common entry points in the current threat landscape. Web servers provide an external avenue directly into your corporate network, which often results in web servers being an initial intrusion vector or mechanism of persistence. Monitoring for exploitation and web shells should be a high priority ...