According to a report released by RSA Security LLC, an American security company, online fraudsters mainly target social media these days.
RSA Security Study
The RSA FraudAction™ Intelligence team has recently noticed fraud activities on social media platforms have extremely grown with regard to volume and visibility.
The research by RSA Security is called “Hiding in Plain Sight: The Growth of Cybercrime in Social Media.” It explains in details all the points concerning the mentioned issues.
Of course, this isn’t something new. Social media was attacked by cyber criminals in the past as well. The point is that the use of social media has grown immensely. So fraudsters all over the world have started excessively using social media platforms for phishing, data mining, and malware attacks.
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Facts Found
The RSA’s research found that Facebook was in the first place. Currently, the most frequently used tool by fraudster groups is Facebook’s WhatsApp messaging app.
There were 500+ social media groups with more than 220.000 members throughout the world. 60% of those members were from Facebook groups; almost all of them were based outside the Unites States or Western Europe.
The groups mainly used the “public” or “closed” settings. According to RSA’s FraudAction team, easily accessible information was found in the mentioned groups. The information included credit card numbers with PII and authorization codes, cashout and credit muling services, tools for malware and hacking, and also cybercrime tutorials.
Interestingly, fraudsters were sometimes conducting their businesses from their real personal profiles. Gabriel Guzman, head of fraud intelligence at RSA, notes the situation is alarming. Anyone can access compromised financial data and learn how to use it without major challenges.
Importantly, the research provides an insight into the key social structures influencing fraudulent activities. As a result, efforts against fraudulent attacks will become more effective.