The Russian Interior Ministry told about the goals of hacking ordinary accounts of scammers

Scammers who hack accounts in messengers and social networks use them to send phishing messages, participate in gray schemes and blackmail. This was reported on December 23 in the Telegram channel of the Department for the Organization of the fight against the illegal use of information and communication technologies (UBK) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

"Hacking such an account is rarely necessary for the sake of reading correspondence. It is used as a tool: to send phishing messages, participate in gray schemes or blackmail," the agency explained.

As noted in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, accounts often store documents, personal photos and work correspondence, access to which can become the basis for extortion. The agency stressed that it is the "live" account of an ordinary user with a history and activity that is in demand for the shadow market.

A separate problem is the biometric data accumulated in messengers — voice and video, which can be used by neural networks to simulate the speech of the account owner. As an example, law enforcement officers cited a case when intruders hacked the teacher's account, created a group chat with her parents on her behalf and allegedly collected money for a trip to St. Petersburg.

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On December 19, the UBK of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that fraudsters were massively creating phishing copies of blocked Internet resources in order to blackmail their users. The agency stressed that regardless of the legends used by fraudsters, extortion and threats to disseminate personal data are criminally punishable acts.

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