Scammers Who Scam Scammers, Hackers Who Hack Hackers: Exploring a Sub-economy on Cybercrime Forums

Explore the sub-economy of scams on cybercrime forums, where scammers target other scammers, hackers, and criminals, and learn how law enforcement and threat intelligence professionals can benefit from understanding this complex landscape.

Key takeaways

Many scammers on cybercrime forums try to scam other scammers, hackers, and criminals.
The author of the talk, Matt Wixie, describes the sub-economy of scams on cybercrime forums.
Scammers often scam other scammers to get away with funds or to protect their reputation.
Scammers may try to impersonate admins or moderators on cybercrime forums to gain credibility.
Forums often have measures in place to combat scams, such as dedicated arbitration forums and blacklists.
The most common type of scam on these forums is the “rip and run” scam, where the scammer promises a product or service but never delivers.
Other types of scams include alt repping, where a scammer creates multiple accounts to inflate their reputation, and fake guarantors, who provide fake services to scammers.
Criminals may be reluctant to report scams because they are often associated with the criminal underworld.
Scams can be difficult to detect and require careful analysis of digital evidence.
Cybercrime forums are often populated by experienced and skilled threat actors.
The author highlights the need for more research into the sub-economy of scams on cybercrime forums.
Law enforcement and threat intelligence professionals can learn a lot from studying these forums and the scammers who operate on them.

Scammers Who Scam Scammers, Hackers Who Hack Hackers: Exploring a Sub-economy on Cybercrime Forums

More talks