Turning Up the Dial

Abstract

Trust and reputation play a core role in underground cybercrime markets, where participants are anonymous and there is little legal recourse for dispute arbitration. These underground markets exist in tension between two opposing forces: the drive to hide incriminating information, and the trust and stability benefits that greater openness yields. Revealing information about transactions to mitigate scams also provides valuable data about the market. We analyse the first dataset, of which we are aware, about the transactions created and completed on a well-known and high-traffic underground marketplace, Hack Forums, along with the associated threads and posts made by its users over two recent years, from June 2018 to June 2020. We use statistical modelling approaches to analyse the economic and social characteristics of the market over three eras, especially its performance as an infrastructure for trust. In the Setup era, we observe the growth of users making only one transaction, as well as 'power-users' who make many transactions. In the Stable era, we observe a wide range of activities (including large-scale transfers of intermediate currencies such as Amazon Giftcards) which declines slowly from an initial peak. Finally, we analyse the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, concluding that while we see a significant increase in transactions across all categories, this reflects a stimulus of the market, rather than a transformation. New users overcome the 'cold start' problem by engaging in low-level currency exchanges to prove their trustworthiness. We observe currency exchange accounts for most contracts, and Bitcoin and PayPal are the preferred payment methods by trading values and number of contracts involved. The market is becoming more centralised over time around influential users and threads, with significant changes observed during the Setup and Covid-19 eras. CCS CONCEPTS • Social and professional topics → Computer crime; • Mathematics of computing → Time series analysis; • Security and privacy → Social aspects of security and privacy.

Empty Streets, Busy Internet: A Time-Series Analysis of Cybercrime and Fraud Trends During COVID-19

“…They observe that cybercriminals have mainly adapted already existing attack strategies to exploit psychological effects of the pandemic, for example, higher levels of fear. Similarly, Vu et al (2020) examined underground cybercrime markets during the pandemic, finding a significant increase in the volume of products involved but no notable differences in the types of transactions, users or behaviours in the markets they studied. Payne (2020) used data from the US Federal Trade Commission to identify an overall increase in reported fraud cases in the first three months of 2020 in comparison to the same period in 2019.…”

A Graph-Based Stratified Sampling Methodology for the Analysis of (Underground) Forums

“…Similarly, Campobasso and Allodi [24] measured the market trade volume of user-profiles and attackers' purchasing preferences in an underground forum. Vu et al [25] performed a longitudinal analysis of the trading activities in HF and their evolution over different 'eras'. They observed how currency exchange and payments account for the majority of the contracts and payments are performed using Bitcoin and PayPal.…”

“…Several works investigate the properties of online social networks to identify influential actors and analyze topics of interests [26], [17], [22], [27], [25]. Motoyama et al [28] analyzed social network dynamics from leaks of 6 underground forums.…”

“…However, if two members rarely post something, then the shortest path between them could be very long and require traversing a large portion of the graph. Fortunately for society but unfortunately for graph algorithms, most members of a cybercrime forum are not active and post very little [52], [25].…”

Impact of COVID-19 on financial institutions: navigating the global emerging patterns of financial crime

“…Taking advantage of the increased transfer of money via cyberspace as opposed to physically and directly through cash transfers, cybercrime has also become quite commonplace (Vu et al , 2020). Using the latest state-of-the-art technology, fraudsters have been able to perpetrate increasingly sophisticated frauds targeting online transactions.…”