Online poker and how cybercriminals have fun

Poker, poetry, and hackers

Trend Micro recently released the results of its "underground monitoring" report, which includes hacker forums on how these people organize their leisure time together.

It makes sense that especially during a pandemic, cybercriminals prefer online entertainment. What caught our attention were the top activities Trend Micro listed:

1. Poker tournaments in private clubs;
2. Rap battles
3. Poetry contests.

As an example of the great popularity of underground poker tournaments on specialized forums, the following screenshot was shared — the main topics have several thousand views.

We must recognize the creativity of the forum administrators as they manage to perfectly disguise a poker tournament as a poetry contest.

Stolen data as prizes

This wouldn’t be that serious if it didn't take place on underground websites used by cybercriminals. Such internal activity, of course, is meant to unite its members.

Trend Micro experts have identified the main way that cybercriminals use poker tournaments to support their colleagues. There are specific prizes and they are valuable to a very narrow audience. The list of such "rewards" is quite extensive, but here are the main ones:

• Access to cloud-based logs with stolen data, including credit cards;
• Licenses for the Linken Sphere browser;
• VISA Gold Card with scanned IDs;
• Scripts to automate the creation of websites and online stores:
• Verified e-wallets;

Online poker and security

Of course, we’ve all been aware of such scammers and their communities for a long time. The irony is that poker players often fall victims to the participants in these private tournaments.

The facts provided by Trend Micro show that the criminal "business" on the Internet is growing and developing, and they are also looking for leisure activities. Therefore, online poker security is increasingly critical.

You can only protect yourself by following all the recommendations of security experts, including using strong passwords, having up-to-date antivirus software, etc.

Also read: GGPoker vs. Real-Time Assistance (RTA)

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