Lockdown Restrictions Cause Woes in the Dark Web

What is happening

The underground situation

• The biggest shock to the underground economy is the lack of business activity. However, most of the dark web forum members are looking for genuine information.
• While some marketplaces are taking advantage of the COVID-19 situation, others are trying to ease the stress of lockdown.
• In other segments, stolen credit card shops seem to suffer from the lack of fresh data as sellers are cross-posting the same cards to multiple shops.

What the experts are saying

• Money laundering services are worsening their terms and conditions related to payment and withdrawal. However, it is not expected to impact demand.
• Since the start of February, more than 80,000 registered domains have been found to contain words such as Corona, COVID, quarantine, and Wuhan, some of which are being used for malicious purposes. 
• The World Economic Forum (WEF) has ranked the acceleration of digitization of the economy, data theft and cyberattacks as major global threats.

Worth noting

• Although the research by Trustwave paints the underground community in a humanizing way, there are others who are trying to take advantage of this situation to the maximum extent.
• Users are offered a ‘coronavirus update’ on whether they can get a refund for their orders as a plot to steal their credentials by making them log in to phishing pages.

In essence