Underground forums are platforms for cyber criminals on which they offer stolen data or cyber criminal services for sale. However, there also seems to be more and more inconsistencies in the underground, which is increasingly causing trust in criminal providers to decline.
Furthermore, such forums are more often broken up by police authorities, which are increasingly taking action against cybercrime. As a result, the focus of activities is increasingly directed towards e-commerce platforms and communication via Discord, which increases the anonymity of users. In addition, the prices for the illegal products and services offered are falling.
Despite the decline in trust in the underground, there are still some products that lead to the emergence of new markets. The services include:
- Deepfake services for blackmailing with falsified pornographic content ("sextortion") or for circumventing the verification requirements using photos on certain websites.
- AI-based gambling bots for predicting dice results and cracking the complex Roblox CAPTCHA.
- Access-as-a-Service for hacked devices and corporate networks. Fortune 500 company prices can go as high as $ 10.000. Some services include read and write access.
- Accounts for wearables that allow cyber criminals to abuse the device warranty to request replacement devices.
The full English investigation report is available from Trend Micro
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