{"id":54330,"date":"2023-10-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-27T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"urn:uuid:b811d24a-2a6f-b04f-ef0f-9ed9e4241b6e"},"modified":"2023-10-27T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T00:00:00","slug":"how-kopeechka-an-automated-social-media-accounts-creation-service-can-facilitate-cybercrime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/how-kopeechka-an-automated-social-media-accounts-creation-service-can-facilitate-cybercrime\/","title":{"rendered":"How Kopeechka, an Automated Social Media Accounts Creation Service, Can Facilitate Cybercrime"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In recent years, cybercriminals have become increasingly professional \u2014 fraudsters have consistently been improving their skills, making less crucial mistakes, and creating various \u201cas-a-service\u201d businesses to help lower-skilled threat actors launch scams and attacks, allowing the latter to run full cybercrime operations.<\/p>\n

There are different types of cybercrime services that exist today, including malware-as-a-service, where cybercriminals develop and sell malware services to other malicious actors; the service also includes creating and spreading malware types such as ransomware<\/a> on compromised hosts. Meanwhile, other services require the use of multiple social media accounts to be successfully carried out, such as misinformation, spamming,<\/a> and malware propagation. Indeed, it\u2019s not uncommon for cybercriminals to send thousands of spam messages using thousands of accounts on social media platforms. But how do they manage to automate all of it?<\/p>\n

Recently, we came across a service that, while it is not necessarily illegal, facilitates cybercrime operations that rely on large-scale social media spamming: the Kopeechka service. In Russian, \u201ckopeechka\u201d means \u201cpenny<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The service has been active since the beginning of 2019 and provides easy account registering services for popular social media platforms, including Instagram, Telegram, Facebook, and X (formerly Twitter). We also noted that registrations on chat sites aimed at minors were available via Kopeechka.<\/p>\n

This report explores the Kopeechka service and gives a detailed technical analysis of the service\u2019s features and capabilities and how it can help cybercriminals to achieve their goals. <\/p>\n

How social media platforms secure their account creation processes<\/span><\/p>\n

Most social media platforms have taken active steps to strengthen their accounts creation security. Since a lot of cybercriminals create accounts on social media platforms for use in their illegal operations, social media companies are trying to minimize the risk of having malicious actors on their platforms \u2014 an effort that starts with the account creation process.<\/p>\n

Different security measures exist to protect platforms against the creation of fraudulent accounts, such as the following:<\/p>\n