Terbium Labs, A Dark Web Data Intelligence company previously with its tool ‘MatchLight’ helped to find stolen health data from the dark web. The team conducted an intense research on these dark web markets across several thousands of fraud guides to reveal actionable guides that actually work.
In their Whitepaper: “Inside the Dark Web: Fraud Guides” they have given a transparent look about the corners of the dark web.
Analysts – Ahmed Eissa and Rachel Silver who conducted the research bought the fraud guides that were listed for sale on two of the major dark web markets: Alphabay and Hansa for the study.
The Dark Web Fraud Guides focused on user manuals that covered topics such as,
- Drugs
- Fraud
- Hacking
- Security & Anonymity
- Social Engineering etc.
Main focus on these showcases were some malicious methods that result in Financial Gains. Fraud Guides provide specific information on exploiting processes, products, and people for profit.
Drug Guides Include drugs use and trafficking whereas exploit and hacking guides mostly covered with simple “how to hack” manuals.
One such unlisted category is ‘Other’ contained mostly everything that could fit into any category but which was poorly tagged by vendors that possibly include counterfeiting guides, bank drop etc.
Guide listing includes ‘Packages’ which contain a combination of several guides or even sometimes thousands of guides.
Each Vendor promotes guides like a product with a catchy title often aimed to make the possibility of purchase to increase like the below one “Ultra Big Fraud Package ★ FREE Gifts ★ Updated 2016 ★ all of AB Guides in One Package” which the vendor ‘BWellborn’ is selling it for $8.50.
The cost of guides that available on these markets. On Alphabay the cheapest guide is free and the most expensive guide is around $25000. On Hansa, the Cheapest guide is $1.61 and the markets most expensive is $99,999.50.
Having said they contained a large number of guides but are they actionable and legitimate? As analyzed these guides the team identified that if they were obtained by anyone and target the organization that could result in immediate security improvements to avoid financial losses.
Do you want Free Pizza? Even guide are available for it. It cost around $0.99 on Alphabay that promises to get free pizza from a popular US Pizza Chain and had been sold around 9 times from January 11th,2017 at the time it was listed.
The Item listing is fairly simple and surprising which says,” In a plain white PDF file consisting of 8 lines of text and four steps, the vendor tells buyers to purchase food from the popular pizza chain via an online payment system, then open a dispute claiming the order never came. The PDF requests buyers leave “good feedback” for the guide and kindly wishes their readers a pleasant free meal, with emphasis on the ‘free’.”
Yes, these could cause bigger financial loss to the fast food company is widely used but they can tackle it by simply making a change to their complaint system.
Not all the guides were actionable and legitimate. After purchasing 1,102 guides from 34 market listings only 851 Unique guides could be found. On further classification 629 guides were illegitimate and 202 as legitimate fraud guides.
Not only on AlphaBay and Hansa the guides could be found but Valhalla Market did have these but they were repeats that were found in the previous Dark Markets.
The Legitimate & Actionable Guides guides covered Finance, retail, technology, government, media etc.
One of the highlighted fraud guides would be “Bank drops”. This guide provided in-depth instruction on creating bank drops (“anonymous” bank accounts created with stolen and/or fraudulent information) for nine separate financial institutions, walking its reader through every step, from at- home setup to at-bank withdrawal.
Yes, Dark Web is mostly filled with bogus information and you can end up wasting your money by purchasing these guide and some of the listings that included with the Ultra-Big Fraud Guide are below that is totally irrelevant and way off the topic listed.
How to catch a Kingfish is one of the bizarre guides that can be found. and the below the documentation of the Photoshop 2010 in several languages.
Primary targets of these guides – finance and retail Industries to exploit the business in fraudulent ways possible. The report reads, ” These deceptive methods present real harm to those that neglect to guard against these crooked handbooks.”
Sara says
Saxy