Cybercrime Blog | Microte Rapid City

The dark web market landscape is constantly changing, with new markets emerging, old markets disappearing, and law enforcement agencies stepping up their efforts to disrupt and dismantle these platforms. In 2023, we can look forward to the following trends in the dark web markets:

• Increased use of decentralized marketplaces: In response to the growing risks of centralized markets being seized or compromised, decentralized marketplaces are gaining popularity, as they are less vulnerable to attacks or censorship.
• According to sites like darkweburls.com and avast, we can expect a growing diversity of products and services in 2023: Dark web markets are expanding their portfolios to cater to a wider range of customers and preferences, including niche products, such as exotic drugs, or high-value targets, such as corporate espionage.
• Rising sophistication of vendors and buyers: With more experience and competition, vendors and buyers are becoming more sophisticated in their tactics, such as using advanced encryption, fake reviews, or social engineering.
• Intensifying law enforcement efforts: Law enforcement agencies are investing more resources and technologies to track and apprehend dark web criminals, such as deploying artificial intelligence, blockchain analysis, or undercover agents.

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The current COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected every single facet of our lives. However, cybercriminals seem to be thriving. Since the start of the epidemic in early 2020, the number of phishing scams that use the COVID-19 theme has increased immensely, and it’s having serious effects on the world economy.

Phishing is by no means new. Scammers have been using it since the early days of the internet, and it seems to evolve incredibly quickly. Researchers from both the US and the UK have looked into these recent attacks. As they suspected, the primary platform for coronavirus phishing seems to be emails, both private and public.

Financial Institutions a Primary Target

Cybercriminals in 2020, a lot of whom seem to be active via dark web urls, seem to be focusing their attention on various financial institutions. In fact, some of the highest-rated banks were hit by these attacks recently, including HSBC, Moneygram, World Bank, and Standard Chartered.

New Scamming Trends

In the past two months alone, over 42.9% of emails that mentioned the coronavirus were marked as malicious or suspicious. That is an alarmingly high number of potential scams that are taking advantage of the epidemic. More often than not, a suspicious email will contain a link that you need to click on. Other times, it will have an attached, downloadable file. Each email would frequently claim to come from reputable health agencies like the WHO. Usually, they will ask you to provide a financial donation.

But it doesn’t end there. Scammers will also phish users by claiming to offer updates about the virus. Some of the most notorious examples include:

• Claiming to have the latest cure or vaccine for the virus
• Posting fake updates on the evolution of the virus
• Posting fake data about the virus and the number of victims
• Claiming to offer pandemic food distribution
• Claiming to have the latest info on office closures and quarantine protocols
• Stating that they can handle your FedEx packages

In addition to all that, the scammers are using the temporary export/import ban on goods to their advantage. Moreover, they will target any financial institution that offers relief funds.

Calculating the Losses

The Federal Trade Commission has looked into the losses related to coronavirus email scams. In total, more than $22 million went directly to these scammers. The FTC based this number on over 22,000 consumer complaints about COVID-19 email frauds.

The United Kingdom isn’t faring any better, either. Online consumers in the UK lost roughly £2 million, or $2.5 million, to phishers. In addition, more than £17 million, or $21.3 million, was lost on online shopping scams. With the current financial crises worldwide, these losses are a heavy economical blow to both the US and the UK.

In Conclusion

During a crisis, criminals usually profit the most, and cybercrime is no different. So, in order to avoid being the victim of an email attack, follow these simple steps:

• When you get a COVID-19 email from an address you don’t recognize, don’t click on any links inside of it
• Try to verify the link in a private window or simply hover over it with your mouse
• Block the address if the email seems suspicious
• Don’t click on any files with these extensions: .zip, .exe, .rar, .img, and .slk.

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Google Upset About The Hacking of Gmail Accounts in China News has just come out that the people who tried to steal login details of Google email accounts of numerous account holders, some senior U.S. officials, Chinese activists and journalists which had been hacked some time back might be a work of some Chinese hackers Source Reuters . It is said by Google that the suspects appear to be from Jinan, from the capital of China’s eastern Shandong. Jinan is a place where People’s Liberation Army has six technical bureaus and a technical college, which was investigated by U.S.

last year in regards to a previous attack on Google. The recent computer based invasions of multinational companies have brought up a major problem about Internet security that needs to be resolved. Google detected the hackers and distorted their stealing process Google said on its official blog. Google had earlier disclosed about the previous cyber attacks on its systems by hackers in China and this recent event could worsen the things between Google and Beijing. Google partly withdrew its services from China after last year’s conflict between Google and Chinese government over censorship and serious hacking episode.

Google did not say that the Chinese government backed the attacks. The cyber attacks taking place from China has become quite common recently, said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer at telecommunications company BT. “It’s not just the Chinese government. It’s independent actors within China who are working with the tacit approval of the government,” he said. The United States of America has warned that if a cyber attack presumably if it’s demolishing enough, then the real world military will come into action and retaliate, although experts say it is difficult to trace origin precisely.

Lockheed Martin Corp says it had suffered “a significant and tenacious attack”. The point is cyber attacks are becoming very frequent and now big giants are being targeted where as in the earlier it used to happen just for personal reasons but now targets like Google and Lockheed Martin Corp make us assume that the motives are something different and huge. Cyber crimes are quite similar to regular crimes just the procedures of doing them is different, its like you can steal a topsecret file without having the need to walk into the office.

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