Researchers at Kaspersky Lab have discovered a new fraudulent scheme: cybercriminals create fake exchanges to sell cookies, inviting users to put their files up for auction.
Since January 2021, analysts have identified 20 websites written in Russian that pretend to be such fake exchanges. Users of these resources were offered a generous monetary reward: up to $ 5,000 per day for selling cookies.
If a site visitor agrees to a tempting offer and clicks on the link, he is redirected to a fake page where a special service is supposedly running that allows you to read cookies from the victim’s device and helps to clean up their market value.
Fraudsters lure victims with an average of $ 700 to $ 2,000. Then the user is offered to put cookies on a kind of auction, in which different companies allegedly take part. Fraudsters assure that the data will eventually be sold to the one that offers the highest price.
“If the victim agrees, she is asked to attach payment details to her account in the system. This happens by replenishing the balance of your personal account in the amount of 6 euros, which the scammers promise to return along with the money they earned within a few minutes. When replenishing the balance, you also have to enter your bank card details. As a result, the user does not receive any payments, and the cybercriminals retain 6 euros and the payment data, ”explains Tatyana Shcherbakova, senior content analyst at Kaspersky Lab.
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