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

It's no secret that criminal forums and marketplaces are crammed with nefarious activity. But behind all the initial access brokers, stolen data, and malware, there's a hidden, thriving subcategory of crime going unnoticed: threat actors targeting other threat actors. These cannibalistic criminals (we call them 'metaparasites': a parasite whose host is also a parasite) are such a persistent and expensive problem that there are specific forum rooms - containing thousands of posts and going back years - dedicated to blacklisting them, arbitrating scam complaints between users, and reporting imitation 'ripper' sites. In this talk, we present a novel investigation into scammers who scam scammers and hackers who hack hackers, on three of the most well-established and prominent criminal marketplaces...

By: Angela Gunn , Matt Wixey

Full Abstract and Presentation Materials:
https://www.blackhat.com/eu-22/briefi...