Scammers Who Scam Scammers, Hackers Who Hack Hackers: Exploring a Sub-economy on Cybercrime Forums
summary
Analysis of 12 months on Exploit, XSS and Breach Forums shows about $2.5M lost to scams, with Exploit logging ~2,500 reports and XSS ~760, mean losses similar across sites. Detailed casework finds meta-parasites running rip-and-run, fake-leak, referral and alt-repping scams, a 20-site fake-marketplace network using JavaScript clipboard substitution that routed ~$87k–$132k in BTC, and forum tools like guarantors and a jabber checker that are routinely impersonated. Arbitration threads frequently leak screenshots and IPs; only ~8% hide evidence.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Introduction to meta parasites
- 1:04Marketplace ecosystem analysis
- 3:50Arbitration and moderation
- 8:22High-profile scam victims
- 10:08Common scam techniques
- 14:23Impersonation and blackmails
- 17:15Technical scams and cloning
- 20:12Scamming the scammers
- 23:13Network of fake marketplaces
- 29:16Scam reports as intelligence
- 34:49Key takeaways and conclusion
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