Social Media Impersonators Increase 11-fold
Posted by: Timothy Weaver on 02/17/2017 11:56 AM
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Is that really your friend on Facebook or is it a social media impersonator?
The number of social media impersonators has increased 11-fold from December 2014 to December 2016. There main goal is to steal credentials and personal information.
ZeroFOX analyzed nearly 40,000 identified impersonator profiles and found that nearly half of those profiles disguise their payload as a fake coupon or giveaway using the brand to attract promotions seekers. A third of those impersonators are sending their victims to a phishing page in order to steal login credentials, credit cards and personal information.
Impersonators were found on all social media including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and Linkedin. They are also using advertising to promote their payloads.
“The networks’ attempts to provide ‘verification’ to real corporate accounts has led to a new breed of impersonations and verification scams,” the report noted. “The broader impersonator landscape revealed many tactics meant to lure the user into buying competitor or counterfeit merchandise, providing personal information to unknowing fake recruiters, entering fabricated contests to steal personal information or money, engaging in fraudulent money-flips and more.”
“We’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to combatting impersonators. While we encountered traditional payloads such as phishing and malware, were found a larger set of threats unique to impersonation on social media,” the firm said in the report. “These included unseen scams, fraud, brand abuse and follower farming. This broader threat landscape extends beyond targeted threats and represents a more systemic issue of risks impacting enterprise security, privacy and reputation. If allowed to go unresolved, these threats impact the organization’s bottom line and damage fundamental customer trust in the organization. Therefore, we prescribe a new defense-in-depth approach tuned for social media to arm organizations with a tried and proven methodology for identifying and combatting impersonators.”
Source: Info Security
The number of social media impersonators has increased 11-fold from December 2014 to December 2016. There main goal is to steal credentials and personal information.ZeroFOX analyzed nearly 40,000 identified impersonator profiles and found that nearly half of those profiles disguise their payload as a fake coupon or giveaway using the brand to attract promotions seekers. A third of those impersonators are sending their victims to a phishing page in order to steal login credentials, credit cards and personal information.
Impersonators were found on all social media including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and Linkedin. They are also using advertising to promote their payloads.
“The networks’ attempts to provide ‘verification’ to real corporate accounts has led to a new breed of impersonations and verification scams,” the report noted. “The broader impersonator landscape revealed many tactics meant to lure the user into buying competitor or counterfeit merchandise, providing personal information to unknowing fake recruiters, entering fabricated contests to steal personal information or money, engaging in fraudulent money-flips and more.”
“We’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to combatting impersonators. While we encountered traditional payloads such as phishing and malware, were found a larger set of threats unique to impersonation on social media,” the firm said in the report. “These included unseen scams, fraud, brand abuse and follower farming. This broader threat landscape extends beyond targeted threats and represents a more systemic issue of risks impacting enterprise security, privacy and reputation. If allowed to go unresolved, these threats impact the organization’s bottom line and damage fundamental customer trust in the organization. Therefore, we prescribe a new defense-in-depth approach tuned for social media to arm organizations with a tried and proven methodology for identifying and combatting impersonators.”
Source: Info Security
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