Intsights report: Cybercriminals are embracing messaging apps

NEW YORK — IntSights Cyber Intelligence, the industry’s first and only enterprise threat management provider that t r ansforms t ai l ored threat intelligence into automated security operations, today released its latest threat intelligence trend report, Messaging Applications: The New Dark Web. The research suggests that the recent crackdown on popular dark web markets AlphaBay and Hansa is driving cybercriminals to migrate to messaging apps Discord, ICQ, Skype, Telegram and Whatsapp.

“The anonymity promised by dark web networks such as TOR and i2p was the key reason for their popularity among cyber criminals,” said Guy Nizan, IntSights CEO and co- founder. “Now that the dark web is no longer safe for hackers and threat actors, they are moving to messaging platforms and brazenly conducting their illicit activities on the same apps that millions use every day.”

The most popular messaging apps have all implemented a group chat feature, which individuals can join by clicking on an “invite link.”

I ntSights analyzed thousands of black markets, text storage/ paste sites, hacking forums, IRC channels, apps and social media pages, and discovered a steady increase in threat actors inviting cyber-crime forum users to join their groups. The company estimates that up to hundreds of thousands of users of prominent mobile messaging apps are using them to trade stolen credit cards, account credentials, malware