Trying Too Hard to Attract Buyers Can Backfire
Malicious actors face a difficult task in online illicit markets. How can they convince others that they are offering a high quality service (ex. selling stolen credit card numbers) without exposing themselves to arrest or providing their victims (ex. financial institutions) with enough information to prevent further victimization? This blog post investigates how malicious actors […]
46M Cracked Passwords – Are People Getting Better at Securing Their Accounts?
A little over a year ago, malicious actors hacked the MyFitnessPal service. With 143 million users, this was one of the largest hack of credentials ever reported. Now, as Flare Systems is launching its leaked passwords check service, we present the three lessons we learned from analyzing this massive throve of passwords. Getting acquainted with […]
The Changing Costs of Cybercrime
The Workshop on the Economics of Information Security generates year after year some of the best research on information security. This year is no different with the publication of a new paper on the costs of cybercrime. Here are the main takeaways for the financial industry. To measure the costs of cybercrime, we include: 1. […]
Extracting Intelligence From Criminal Complaints
On May 3rd, law enforcement agencies announced that they had seized the servers that hosted the Wall Street darknet illicit market. They also arrested the market’s administrators. A copy of criminal complaint is now published publicly. Criminal complaints like these hold intelligence that is of high interest for many security professionals. As such, reading criminal […]
What Can We Learn From the Bitcoin Address of a Darknet Illicit Market
The researcher Caleb (@5auth) recently discovered the bitcoin address that the darknet illicit market (Wall Street) administrators used to manage all the purchases made on their market. This leak demonstrates just how much intelligence can be gathered using our BitCluster bitcoin intelligence tool as well as a simple bitcoin address. The wallet Caleb identified is […]
How Relevant Are Darknet Illicit Markets?
The lifespan of most darknet illicit markets is very limited. While some remain active for years, most only stay online for months. With the recent shutdown of Dreammarket and Wall Street, many people are currently asking themselves: are darknet illicit markets still relevant? We believe the answer is yes. Evolution of online illicit markets The […]
Clustering Banks Based on the Offenders Targeting Them
Banks are all in the business of protecting savings, loans and helping invest. As a result, banks commonly share many practices and tools. In this blog post, we demonstrate how malicious actors tend to target the same group of financial institutions. This could be the result of malicious actors reusing the same techniques on […]
Are Online Offenders Quitters?
In a podcast I was listening to recently, offenders who had just gotten out of jail were discussing how everything in life is so difficult. Some may think that dealing drugs or stealing cars makes for an easy living with little work and a big payday. The harsh reality is that competition is fierce when […]
Legalizing Cannabis in Canada: An Impact on the Cryptomarket Black Markets?
Canada went through a historic transformation on October 17th. On that date, Canada became the first Western industrialized country to legalize recreational cannabis (RC). Given that an estimated 2 million Canadians use recreational cannabis, the legalization of RC removes much stress of legal sanctions. It will also likely lead to a shift in how police […]
Analyzing Dark Web Credit Card Fraud Revenue
Dark web credit card fraud may seem like a lucrative business. Within the last year, there have been two cases in the U.S. of credit card fraud schemes. Earlier this year, a New York man pled guilty to a credit card scheme which made over $1.5 million in fraudulent purchases, and in which some participants […]
