From 2018 to the third quarter of 2021, Group-IB experts recorded more than 8 thousand domains created by scammers for trading stocks and cryptocurrencies. This is stated in a message published on the company’s website on Tuesday, January 11.
In total, more than 50 different schemes of fake investment projects were discovered. Those wishing to get rich quickly are offered to invest in cryptocurrencies, purchase of shares of oil and gas companies, gold, pharmaceuticals and other “assets”.
Most of the cases studied are technically new “hybrid schemes” – they use fake mobile terminal applications and calls from “personal consultants” along with traditional phishing. For example, one attacker from one email address from June to July 2021 registered 322 domains that he wanted to use for deception.
It is noted that only one of the groups of 150 people lost about 300 million rubles (about $ 4 million) by purchasing bitcoins under the guise of investments on “brokerage exchanges”, the defrauded investors themselves told Group-IB about this.
Over the nine months of last year, experts noted a 163% increase in the number of domains for investment projects compared to previous years.
Experts have identified three main themes of fraud. Among them – “alternative to banks” – about the emergence of a new financial platform that allows investors to receive incredible income. “Mineral resources – to the people!” – on “national projects” for the development of super-profits from oil and gas trade. “Finance for People” is about admission to investment instruments “closed” for most of the real financial organizations. To design their sites, the fraudsters illegally copied the style of popular news resources, for example, Russia 24, RT and RBC.
When a private investor “takes the bait”, he is directed to a questionnaire site from a supposedly well-known bank or to one-page landing pages of an investment project with a request for a phone number. Such projects promise earnings from 300 thousand to 10 million rubles per month. Then the scammer talks on the phone about a unique project where supposedly a special bot program helps to make money in the auctions, and invites the user to register in the system and make a deposit of $ 250 or more.
If the client is in doubt, he may be advised to book a place in the project by making an advance through a cryptocurrency exchanger. In addition, the client may be asked to provide the details of the bank card with which he plans to invest, after which the attacker allegedly sends a request to the bank to approve the deposit.
Also, experts have identified a fully automated scheme in which the victim is sent to Google Play using an advertising post on the social network, where a novice investor needs to download a mobile application – a trading terminal. After a short training course, the investor makes a deposit – $ 250, $ 500 or $ 1,000. When a client wants to withdraw virtual money after some time, the system invites him to pay a “payment gateway commission”. So, with the help of a fraudulent trading terminal, the investor is deceived again.
In December, Izvestia was told by Check Point Research that the number of weekly ransomware infections in Russian organizations increased by 50% in the last month of 2021, compared with the average number of incidents in the January-November period. Experts attributed this to, among other things, the fact that an updated version of the Emotet virus is being distributed in Russia. The owners of the program often sell access to the infrastructure of the victim company to ransomware.
Source: IZ
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
