Cybercriminals Are Hiding Malicious Web Traffic in Plain Sight
1 min read
Summary
Criminal use of VPNs and other proxy services to mask identities and protect malicious activities is on the rise, presenting a challenge to law enforcement agencies trying to clamp down on cybercrime, according to threat intelligence researcher Thibault Seret.
Such services, which are available on the grey market, make it technologically impossible to distinguish criminal from regular traffic, presenting an issue for identification and analysis.
Researchers have noted an increased uptake of such services by criminals in the past two to three years, particularly among cybercriminals who were previously using bulletproof web hosts that offered greater visibility to law enforcement.
Criminal use of VPNs and residential networks is not new, but offering such services on the grey market makes it easier for less technically-able criminals to make use of this technology.
Residential networks, for example, can run on old Android phones or low-end laptops and offer a constant stream of real, rotating IP addresses assigned to homes and offices, making it harder for organisations to spot suspicious activity and harder for law enforcement to identify the source.
