An e-commerce “scam-as-a-service” operation tried-and-tested in Russia has expanded to multiple European countries in 2020, making cybercrime groups over $6.5m in the process, Group-IB has warned.
The Singapore-based cybersecurity company claimed in a new report that “Classiscam” first appeared in Russia in the summer of 2019, but soon migrated west and hit a peak of activity over 2020 as remote workers surged online to shop.
There are now at least 40 active groups using the scam packages to con internet users out of their hard-earned cash.
“In the summer of 2020 we took down 280 scam pages as part of the Classiscam scheme, and by December that number grew 10-fold and reached up to 3000 pages,” said Yaroslav Kargalev, deputy head of CERT-GIB.