Online Cheating (Threat Overview)

Rating scams on the Internet

The PandaLabs antivirus laboratory in September 2010 compiled a rating of the most common scams on the Internet over the past 5 years. Such tricks are based on trust and are widespread. Their goal is to lure money from users. Moreover, the amount varies from $500 to several thousand dollars.

Usually fraudsters act according to one scheme: first they make contact with the victim through email or social networks and ask to answer also by email, or by phone, fax or any other way. Once the bait is thrown in, fraudsters try to enter the victim's trust and, in the end, ask for a certain amount of money using various pretexts.

Nigerian scam

This is one of the first Internet scams, it is still used by cyber scammers. Usually, the user receives an email from a stranger who urgently needs to transfer a large amount of money from one country to another (most often from Nigeria, hence the name). The victim is promised a significant reward for helping to transfer money. However, those who fall on the fishing rod are asked to first transfer a certain amount to pay for bank expenses (usually about $1 000). As soon as the victim transfers money, the fraudster disappears.

Lotteries

In essence, this type of fraud is similar to the Nigerian scam. The user receives an email informing him that he won the lottery and that he needs to send his data to receive the win. As in the previous case, the victim is asked to transfer about $1000 to cover bank and other expenses.

Girlfriend

A beautiful girl finds your email address and wants to meet you. She is always young and dreams of visiting your country and meeting you, as she fell in love at first sight. She wants to come immediately, but at the last moment there are some problems, and she needs money (again about $1,000 should be enough) to buy plane tickets, pay for a visa, and so on. It is not surprising that after transferring the necessary amount, not only the money, but also the girl disappears.

Job invitations

This time, the victim receives a job invitation from a foreign company that is looking for financial agents in your country. The work is extremely simple, you can do it without leaving the house, and at the same time earn up to $3 000 with a three- or four-hour working day. If the victim accepts the offer, she is asked to send bank details. In this case, the victim is used to steal money from those people whose bank details are stolen by cyber fraudsters. The money is transferred to the victim's account, and then they are asked to withdraw the money from the account and forward it through Western Union. So the victim becomes a "transitional link" in the chain of fraudsters, and when the case falls into the police, the victim turns into an accomplice. Unlike other scams, in this case, the victim, without even suspecting this, commits a crime.

Facebook / Hotmail

Scammers steal login information to personal Facebook, Hotmail, etc. Then they change their login so that the page owner no longer has the opportunity to use his account. Further, criminals send messages from this page to all contacts, indicating that the owner of the page is now on vacation (they often write that the vacation takes place in London), that he was robbed just before returning home. Fortunately, tickets for the plane did not go missing, but you need $500 - $1000 to pay for the hotel.

Compensation

This ruse has appeared relatively recently thanks to the Nigerian scam described above. The e-mail states that a special fund has been established to compensate the victims of the Nigerian scam and that the victim's address was on the victim list. The amount of compensation can reach $1 000,000. But, as usual, to get them, you need to pay the preliminary costs - about $1 000.

Mistake

This type of fraud has become particularly popular recently. Perhaps this is due to the global financial crisis and the problems that arose in the sale of goods and real estate. Fraudsters contact a victim who recently advertised the sale of a house, apartment, car, etc. With great enthusiasm, fraudsters agree to buy anything and quickly send a check for a certain amount of money, which is always "accidentally" incorrect (oddly enough, always more than the amount agreed on). The victim is asked to return the difference. And then it turns out that the check is invalid, the house was never sold, and the money transferred by the victim was lost.

Dangerous links from emails

G DATA Software has compiled a list of the most common catches of cyber criminals from the field of social engineering, which are aimed at stealing personal data and fraud on the network. Mostly such tricks are used when sending emails to users from unknown addresses, but sometimes attackers resort to more sophisticated methods:

• When clicking on a link from a letter with promises of free films and music, the user gets to the web page, which to provide the promised content requires to download codecs or a special player.

• Many letters relate to the topic of gaming. Online player communities, among which the World of Warcraft community is the most popular for scammers, offer to download various tools to optimize gaming. Often they are malicious code programs.

• Certain sites insist that the user who mistakenly went to this site has problems with antivirus protection and found a huge number of viruses. Then begins an automatic scan of the PC of the victim of Internet fraud, which really demonstrates the "infected" system. Within the next 10 seconds, the user is offered to purchase a new security solution for only $50.

Ways to cheat on the Internet

Dating Fraud

Main article: Dating site fraud

What to do to avoid becoming a victim of fraudsters?

It is not surprising that people who do not know about such types of Internet scams really believe that they won the lottery or found true love on the Internet. To avoid becoming a victim of fraudsters and avoid material losses, you must follow several tips:

• Make sure your computer has a good anti-virus that can detect spam. In this case, many of the fraudster messages will be found and classified as spam. This will help you to be more careful about any messages with similar content.

• Listen to your intuition. She's your best ally in fighting this kind of fraud. No one gives anything away for nothing, and finding love at first sight on the Internet is unlikely enough. Always be careful to start such acquaintances.

• The Internet is an amazing tool for the realization of a huge number of ideas! But if you really want to sell something, it's better to meet with the buyer live. So, even if you found a buyer online, it's better to pay in the "real world" to make sure the buyer's true intentions.

The threats of the Network are diverse and often not obvious to the user. In 2014, Kaspersky Lab reported the risks for the user to invisibly "pick up" the extortionist Gimemo or Foreign, become part of the Andromeda botnet, lose money in their bank account thanks to the Trojans ZeuS/Zbot or compromise their passwords thanks to the Fareit spy. In most cases, malware is downloaded and installed on the computer, although there are exceptions when using HTML code embedded by attackers.

To start an attack, you need the user to go to a dangerous resource - after that, the download of malware begins. It is for this that spam, SMS or social networks are often used, although sometimes attackers prefer to bring their site to the front pages in search engines. An alternative way is to hack into a popular legitimate resource or banner network.

The stage of loading and installing the malevolent is carried out in two methods. The first is hidden loading using user software vulnerabilities, for example, Java. For this, cybercriminals in stock have a set of exploits like Blackhole. At the same time, a visitor to the infected site may not notice the installation process - as a rule, no indicators appear. The second is the use of social engineering techniques to ensure that a misled user himself downloads and installs malware under the guise of a "flash player update" or other popular software.

Once installed, the malware is free to act. Most often, the goal of attackers is to either steal payment information or other sensitive data, or attach an infected computer to a botnet.

See also

• Cybercrime in the world