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:
- Cyberespionage APT group hides behind cryptomining campaigns
December 2, 2020
An advanced threat group called Bismuth recently used cryptocurrency mining as a way to hide the purpose of their activity and to avoid triggering high-priority alerts. Coin mining is typically regarded as a non-critical security issue, so the method allowed the actor to establish persistence and move laterally on the compromised network, at the same time ...
- The Impact of Modern Ransomware on Manufacturing Networks
December 1, 2020
Ransomware threats have disrupted the manufacturing industry significantly in 2020. In a disturbing trend during the third quarter of the year, attackers appeared to be singling out manufacturing organizations as a victim of choice in their ransomware operations. Ransomware threats have disrupted the manufacturing industry significantly in 2020. These attacks have resulted in substantial losses in ...
- Malicious npm packages caught installing remote access trojans
December 1, 2020
The security team behind the “npm” repository for JavaScript libraries removed two npm packages this Monday for containing malicious code that installed a remote access trojan (RAT) on the computers of developers working on JavaScript projects. The name of the two packages was jdb.js and db-json.js., and both were created by the same author and described ...
- Dox, steal, reveal. Where does your personal data end up?
December 1, 2020
The technological shift that we have been experiencing for the last few decades is astounding, not least because of its social implications. Every year the online and offline spheres have become more and more connected and are now completely intertwined, leading to online actions having real consequences in the physical realm — both good and ...
- Gootkit malware returns to life alongside REvil ransomware
November 30, 2020
After a year-long vacation, the Gootkit information-stealing Trojan has returned to life alongside REvil Ransomware in a new campaign targeting Germany. The Gootkit Trojan is Javascript-based malware that performs various malicious activities, including remote access for threat actors, keystroke capturing, video recording, email theft, password theft, and the ability to inject malicious scripts to steal online ...
- A hacker is selling access to the email accounts of hundreds of C-level executives
November 30, 2020
A threat actor is currently selling passwords for the email accounts of hundreds of C-level executives at companies across the world. The data is being sold on a closed-access underground forum for Russian-speaking hackers named Exploit.in, ZDNet has learned this week. The threat actor is selling email and password combinations for Office 365 and Microsoft accounts, which ...
