BAKU, Azerbaijan, Jan.27
By Sadraddin Aghjayev - Trend:
The cybercrime fraudulent scheme called ‘mammoth’, first massively used in Russia, entered the CIS, Europe, and even the US in 2020, the Russian company Group-IB told Trend on Jan.27.
According to the company, at least 20 large cyber groups are working against users from Romania, Bulgaria, France, Poland, Czech Republic, US, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan, and 20 - against Russia.
"The purpose of such fraudsters is to steal money and bank card data from users via fake websites of popular courier services and marketplaces," the company said.
Group-IB noted that in total for 2020, the earnings of all criminal groups using this fraud scheme exceeded $6.2 million.
“According to our forecasts, the damage from the ‘courier scheme’ may increase by late 2021. Unlike Russia, where courier services, free message boards, and real estate rental resources were the first to take the mammoth blow, the overwhelming number of users and security personnel international companies aren't yet ready to counteract this type of fraud,” the company pointed out. “Also, cybercriminals began to look for new gaps, as, for example, happened with the appearance of fake resources for popular sites for renting housing, cars, and bookmakers."
The use of the ‘mammoth’ scheme was recorded by CERT-GIB and Group-IB Digital Risk Protection specialists back in the summer of 2019 after a series of requests from users who suffered from the scheme.
“In May 2019, we were the first to release a study on this topic. However, the peak of the fraudulent activity fell in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the transition to remote telecommuting, and an increase in demand (on average by 30-40 percent) for online purchases and, accordingly, courier delivery services,” reminded the company. “If in the summer, Group-IB blocked 280 fake resources exploiting the topic of courier delivery of goods, then by December 2020 their number has grown tenfold - up to 3,000 sites.”
Group-IB experts believe that classical monitoring and blocking is no longer enough to suppress such ‘advanced’ scam schemes.
"It’s necessary to identify and block the infrastructure of criminal groups, using an automated system to identify and eliminate digital risks based on artificial intelligence, knowledge base of which is regularly updated with data on infrastructure, tactics, tools and new fraud schemes," the company added.
Group-IB is one of the leading developers of solutions for detecting and preventing cyberattacks, detecting fraud, and protecting intellectual property on the network. The Group-IB Threat Intelligence & Attribution cyber threat data collection system is recognized as one of the best in the world by Gartner, IDC, and Forrester.
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