Meta provided insight this week into the company’s efforts in taking down more than 2 million accounts that were connected to pig butchering scams on their owned platforms, Facebook and Instagram.
Pig butchering scams are big business, with hundreds of millions of dollars involved every year. The numbers are not precise because some researchers see these scams as a special kind of romance scam, while others classify them as investment fraud, muddying the numbers based on which group is counting what type of loss. Still, the general idea is that scammers use elaborate storylines to fatten up victims into believing they are in a romantic or otherwise close personal relationship. Once the victim places enough trust in the scammer, they bring the victim into a cryptocurrency investment scheme.
Read more…
Source: Malwarebytes Labs
Related:
- Operation KillSwitch: Teenager suspected of leading KillSec ransomware group
October 1, 2026
On 30 September 2026, law enforcement took control of KillSec’s leak site, securing at least 110 terabytes of data against further unauthorised access. The cybercrime group used the site to threaten organisations with the publication of stolen files unless they paid a ransom. The action was part of Operation KillSwitch, an international investigation led by German ...
- Hackers steal protective order and foster care records from Arizona courts
September 30, 2026
This is how the Arizona Supreme Court announced that hackers had attacked the state’s court system and stolen the personal information of “many Arizonans.” The court says the attack began with a phishing email containing a malicious link that a court employee clicked. The attackers copied sensitive backup files containing records related to protective orders and foster ...
- ShinyHunters hackers are going after Oracle systems once again
September 29, 2026
ShinyHunters have found a way to bypass a mitigation for a zero-day they previously exploited – so now, not only are they back to abusing the same bug, they’ve even expanded their scope to target a much larger pool of organizations. In June 2026, it was reported that ShinyHunters, the infamous data extortionists, found a Java ...
- Dutch police arrest ‘security researcher’ in ShinyHunters probe
September 29, 2026
Dutch police have arrested a 24-year-old man on suspicion of involvement with the prolific ShinyHunters cybercrime group. Cops announced the arrest on Monday night and said the Amsterdam resident would appear before judges at Rotterdam District Court today (Tuesday). Officers have not named the suspect. However, a company has identified a person they believe to be the ...
- Italy’s top bank hit by an AI messaging scam which cost it nearly €100 million
September 29, 2026
Cybercriminals have tricked a major Italian bank into wiring more than $100 million abroad by targeting executives with AI-powered deepfakes. Some of the money has since been recovered, but a significant portion remains unaccounted for. The target was Fideuram – Intesa Sanpaolo Private Banking, a very large Italian private-banking and wealth-management group owned by Intesa Sanpaolo. ...
- Fake iPhone Duo preorder scam triggers DarkSword attack
September 29, 2026
Apple announced its first foldable iPhone on September 9, and scammers were ready to ‘deliver’ one before anyone could buy it. Most of what MalwareBytes researchers found around the launch of the iPhone Duo and iPhone 18 Pro was familiar fraud. But one fake preorder page was different. Read more… Source: MalwareBytes Labs Sign up for the Cyber Security Review ...