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“Someone, somewhere, the data is exfiltrated from their machines when we talk about,” said Volodymyr Diachenko, co-founder of the Cybersecurity Consulting Society SecurityDery.
Sarayut Thaneeerat | Moment | Getty images
Cybercriminals have intensified their efforts to fly and sell passwords online, warn the experts. The alarm comes after the discovery of online data sets containing billions of exposed account identification.
The 30 data sets included 16 billion connection titles on several platforms, notably Apple, Google and Facebook, and were first of all reported by Cybernews researchers last week.
The exhibitions were identified during this year by Volodymyr Diachenko, co-founder of the Cybersecurity Consulting Society, Security Discovery, and are suspected of being the work of several parties.
“This is a collection of various sets of data that have appeared on my radar since the beginning of the year, but they all share a common URL structure, connection details and passwords,” Diaachenko told CNBC.
According to Daichenko, all the signs indicate that the connection information disclosed is the work of “infostators” – malware that extracts sensitive data from devices, including user names and passwords, credit card information and online browser data.
Although the connections lists probably contain many duplicates as well as obsolete and incorrect information, the volume overwhelming results puts the circulation of sensitive data on the web into perspective.
It should also relaunch how infostators have become today’s “cyber-peak”, said Daichenko. “Someone, somewhere, has exfiltrated data from their machines when we speak.”
Daichenko was able to detect the data on display because their owners had temporarily indexed to the web shamelessly password. Inadvertently shared data leaks are often captured by the security discovery, but not to scales seen so far this year.
Threats of infostealer increasing
According to Simon Green, president of Asia-Pacific and Japan at Palo Alto Networks, the magnitude of the 16 billion titles of exposed skills is alarming and certainly notable, but not entirely surprising for those who are on the front line of cybersecurity.
“Many modern infosteralists are designed with advanced escape techniques, allowing them to bypass traditional security controls based on the signature, which makes them more difficult to detect and stop,” he added.
Therefore, there has been an increase in high -level infostal attacks. For example, in March, Microsoft Threat Intelligence revealed a malicious campaign Use of infostators who had affected nearly a million devices worldwide.
Infosteralists generally have access to victims’ devices by encouraging them to download malware, which can be hidden in everything, from phishing emails to bogus websites for search engines.
The reason behind the infostal attacks is generally financial, attackers often seeking to directly take back bank accounts, credit cards and cryptocurrency portfolios or to commit identity fraud.
Cybercriminals can use stolen identification information and other personal data for purposes such as the development of very convincing and personalized phishing attacks and individuals or blackmail organizations.
According to Green de Palo Alto, the scale and the dangers of these types of infosteaux have intensified, thanks to the growing prevalence of underground markets which offer “cybercrime as a service”, in which suppliers charge customers malware, sensitive data and other illicit online services.
“Cyber crime as a service is the critical catalyst here. It has fundamentally democratized cybercrime,” said Green.
The underground markets – often hosted on the Dark web – create a request for cybercriminals to steal personal information, then sell it to the crooks.
In this way, data violations become more than individual accounts – they represent an “interconnected network of compromise identities” which can fuel subsequent attacks, said Green.
According to Diachenko, it is likely that at least some of the compromised connection data sets he has identified with or will be exchanged with online crooks.
In addition to that, malware and other resources that can help facilitate infostal attacks can be found in these markets.
CNBC A reported On how the availability of these tools and services has considerably reduced technical obstacles to budding criminals, making it possible to carry out sophisticated attacks on a massive global scale.
The report revealed that infostal attacks increased by 58% in 2024.
What can be done
With the growing prevalence of malware and online use, it is now right to assume that most people will be in contact with an infostant threat, said Ismael Valenzuela, vice-president of research and information on the threats of the Arctic Wolf cybersecurity company.
In addition to frequent password updates, individuals will have to be more alert to the increasing quantity of malware hiding in illegitimate software, applications and other downloadable files, said Valenzuela. He added that using Multi-Factor authentication On accounts has become more important than ever.
From the company’s point of view, it is important to adopt a “zero trust architecture” which not only constantly authenticates the user, but also authenticates the behavior of the device and the user, he added.
Governments have also done more to suppress infostability activities in recent months.
In May, the European European Cybercrime Center for Europol said it had collaborated with Microsoft and the global authorities for disturb The infosteller “Lumma”, which he called “the most important infostiler threat in the world”.
