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:
- Bad bots are on the attack, and your defence plan is probably wrong
March 1, 2021
Google is warning that bots are causing more problems for business — but many companies are only focused on the most obvious attacks. At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic Microsoft chief Satya Nadella said Microsoft had seen “two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.” Google now sees that attackers have adapted to these ...
- Universal Health Services lost $67 million due to Ryuk ransomware attack
March 1, 2021
Universal Health Services (UHS) said that the Ryuk ransomware attack it suffered during September 2020 had an estimated impact of $67 million. UHS, a Fortune 500 hospital and healthcare services provider, has over 90,000 employees who provide services to roughly 3.5 million patients each year in more than 400 US and UK healthcare facilities. UHS said last ...
- Npower withdraws mobile app after hackers steal personal details
February 27, 2021
Npower has permanently withdrawn its mobile app after hackers used it to access its customers’ personal details, including the sort codes and the last four digits of their bank accounts. The hack, which cybersecurity experts said left the firm’s customers “wide open to fraud”, is understood to have taken place around the start of February. The company ...
- Go malware is now common, having been adopted by both APTs and e-crime groups
February 26, 2021
The number of malware strains coded in the Go programming language has seen a sharp increase of around 2,000% over the last few years, since 2017, cybersecurity firm Intezer said in a report published this week. The company’s findings highlight and confirm a general trend in the malware ecosystem, where malware authors have slowly moved away ...
- Dutch Research Council (NWO) confirms ransomware attack, data leak
February 26, 2021
The recent cyberattack that forced the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to take its servers offline and suspend grant allocation processes was caused by the DoppelPaymer ransomware gang. The hackers gained access to NWO’s network on February 8 and stole internal documents, threatening with leaking them unless the organization paid a ransom. Since NWO does not cooperate with ...
- TD Bank suffered systemwide banking outage, services now recovered
February 25, 2021
TD Bank has recovered from a major IT systems outage today that prevented account holders from accessing their online bank accounts, use ATM, or check balances over the phone. The outage started at approximately 2 AM EST this morning and prevented TD Bank members from logging into their online accounts. When attempting to do so, their systems ...