Next to the ubiquitous for the cybercrime ecosystem, traffic acquisition tactics such as, blackhat SEO (search engine optimization), malvertising, embedded/injected redirectors/doorways on legitimate Web sites, establishing purely malicious infrastructure, and social engineering driven spam campaigns, cybercriminals are also masters of utilizing social media for the purpose of attracting traffic to their fraudulent/malicious campaigns. From the efficient abuse of Craigslist, the systematic generation of rogue/bogus/fake Instagram, YouTube, and email accounts, the process of automatic account generation continues to take place, driving a cybercriminal’s fraudulent business model, naturally, setting up the foundations for upcoming malicious campaigns that could materialize at any point in time.
In this post, I’ll discuss a commercially available automatic account registration tool that’s successfully targeting Tumblr, emphasize on its core features, and discuss tactics through which its users could abuse access to these automatically registered accounts.