Stunning information! Seems you may’t belief criminals.

That goes with out saying, in fact, however maybe the criminals themselves are additionally responsible of trusting others an excessive amount of and getting scammed because of this.

Sophos researchers presented an investigation in Black Hat Europe this week into so-called “metaparasites”: scammers who rip-off different scammers.

Sophos’ Matt Wixey and Angela Gunn described their analysis as:

“…a groundbreaking investigation into scammers scamming scammers and hackers hacking hackers, in three of probably the most established and outstanding prison markets. We look at the scale of this shadowy multi-billion greenback ecosystem; metaparasite motivations; how arbitration processes work; and what affect metaparasites have on the tradition and operations of the markets during which they function.”

And some huge cash might be made by attacking cybercriminals.

In line with Sopbos, cybercriminals have misplaced greater than US$2.5 million to different scammers within the final 12 months, in simply three underground boards.

Scams can take many types, together with pretend knowledge leaks, blackmail, backdoor malware, and phishing.

The researchers even discovered 20 web sites that had been created to imitate prison marketplaces, “with the intent to trick customers into shelling out an ‘activation price’ of greater than $100.”

My God, what a disgrace, it would not matter.

And, maybe unsurprisingly, there may be even proof that some scammers who’ve been scammed take revenge by scamming the very individuals who scammed them (I hope they’re following this by the tip…)

The issue of cybercriminals deceptive different cybercriminals has change into so necessary that underground boards even have devoted “arbitration rooms” the place disagreements might be aired within the hope of decision.

So that is all loads of enjoyable. And we like the concept cybercriminals are fooling one another as a substitute of spending all their time attacking the harmless public, however is there extra good to return out of this?

In line with the researchers, there are:

“Inadvertently, metaparasites present an intelligence benefit to analysts, permitting us to realize unprecedented insights into in any other case hidden gross sales, trades, offers and identifiers, in addition to market tradition, totally different ranges of safety operational and susceptibility to deception. and social engineering”.

However we should not chuckle an excessive amount of, the researchers warn: “Not solely menace actors are in danger, but in addition inexperienced researchers, journalists, the curious typically.”

So long as those that discover and examine cybercriminal tradition usually are not fooled, I suppose it is going to ease you a bit to assume that cybercriminals are busy scamming one another as a substitute of us.

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