Fancy trying your hand at some financial crimes?
BY:
Antonio Greco
Cyber/Data Science Analyst
PROJECT COUNSEL MEDIA
27 September 2022 (Paris, France) – With tools now available at the cybercrime boutique Genesis Market (our favorite place to shop), online theft, fraud, and extortion have become user-friendly. It is no wonder the problem is growing faster than ever. Insider spoke with someone who knows a thing or two about the topic, as reported in “A Former Cybercriminal Who Once Worked with—and Betrayed—the Secret Service Says the Easy Access to Bots Is One of the Biggest Threats on the Internet Right Now”. The article may be behind the Insider paywall for many of you (we have a subscription but we cannot share links) but the gist is that a major ex-hacker Brett Shannon Johnson (now rehabilitated) now works at a major fraud prevention company (not disclosed). The writer tells us:
“[Johnson] told Insider he worries that shady corners of the web, like bot marketplace The Genesis Market, have made it easier for inexperienced criminals to commit complicated financial crimes. ‘You’ve got sophisticated tools that 98% of cybercriminals simply don’t use, and what scares me right now is we’re seeing that change [to more use],’ Johnson said. Johnson says these bot marketplaces can deliver everything a low-level hacker would need to commit complicated financial crimes. ‘When you visit a Genesis Market, you can search for the target that you’re wanting to get. Chase, Bank of America, Google, Walmart …. you can search for the target. It will deliver the bots or whatever attack tech required to access credentials for that target… So I buy the bot, and the bot delivers everything that I need,’ Johnson added.”
The writer notes cryptocurrencies have been an especially juicy target recently. With these tools at the ready, Johnson suspects, the challenging economy will motivate many otherwise law-abiding folks to try their hand at financial crimes.
And Johnson repeats what we have noted in scores of previous posts: everything a low-level hacker would need is easily obtainable. The Genesis Market is only one of 200+ online cyber criminal platforms we monitor.
So … again … let this be a reminder to stay on top of security best-practices and employ some cybersecurity vendor heavyweights to protect yourself as best as possible. We’ll have a post out shortly to highlight our recommendations based on our years of covering and working with the best in the cyber ecosystem via the International Cybersecurity Forum. Plus, who to follow on social media to stay updated.
