CTM360’s Webhunt platform has exposed a disturbing trend in the world of online fraud. It has monitored more than 17,000 fake news websites that imitate credible news organizations such as CNN, BBC and CNBC. These fake pages are essential to the broader fraud ecosystem. In the process, they draw unsuspecting victims into a maze of fraud.
The increase of BNS sites shows a very technical and advanced way of conducting scams online. These corrupt platforms are extremely deceptive. They entice people into a two-phase scam that first involves deceptive ads and clickbait stories. After potential victims interact with the original content, they are followed up with by scammers pretending to be financial advisors.
The Structure of BNS Scams
Unlike many other BNS scams, BNS scams generally have an easy-to-identify two-phase structure. The first step involves hooking victims with attention-grabbing advertisements and fraudulent listings that promise misleading information. For instance, headlines like “You won’t believe what a prominent public figure just revealed” paired with professional images or national flags are designed to instill trust and intrigue.
In the second stage, scammers take advantage of their target’s newfound eagerness. This important phase typically starts with a bad phone call from someone pretending to be your investment advisor. In the course of this dialogue, the victims are often confronted with demands for identification papers. They are further required to make minimum deposits of around $240 to “activate” their accounts. This deposit serves as a gateway, allowing for a much larger fraudulent scheme. Here, endless requests for additional funds backhandedly shuffle under the guise of “account verifications,” which are intended to delay any withdrawal efforts you may try and initiate.
The Role of Technology in Scam Distribution
CTM360’s Scam Navigator tool has been instrumental in revealing the mechanics behind BNS scams. This tool takes it a step further, outlining the often convoluted steps criminals take to commit fraud. Most importantly, it shows us how these scam operations run and evolve over time. CTM360 utilizes the latest technology to better protect organizations from these threats. By fully leveraging the MITRE framework, they’re able to dramatically sharpen their response tactics.
Attackers have grown more advanced and targeted in their approaches. In many circumstances, they hijack legitimate sites to serve BNS content in subfolders. This approach only makes the takedown process more cumbersome. As a result, law enforcement and cybersecurity experts are increasingly unable to detect and rid these neighborhoods of these scams in a swift manner.
Building Trust Through Deception
BNS sites are designed to establish credibility quickly, directing users to what appear to be professional money-losing scam sites. Examples of these platforms are Trap10, Solara Vynex, and Eclipse Earn. By replicating the look and feel of established news sources, these sites create an illusion of credibility that can easily mislead potential victims.
What is most alarming is the BNS sites capacity to use branding and visual cues we are all familiar with. Since they do this by impersonating actual trusted news organizations, they take advantage of people’s natural tendency to rely on sources of credible information. As you might imagine, this tactic is highly effective at attracting victims. It also green-lights the broader ecosystem of investment fraud, which still runs rampant online.