Social Media

Exploiting Brand Reputation

The pervasive use of social media in day-to-day communication, marketing, and individual expression has become a fundamental part of our lives. Nevertheless, this level of connectivity carries inherent risks, some of which relate to cyber threat intelligence. A significant threat presented within social media is brand impersonation which involves activities by a malicious actor to exploit the influence and reach these platforms enable.

Dark Use Cases

• A platform for impersonating brands: Social networks are perfect breeding grounds for brand impersonation. Malicious actors fabricate counterfeit profiles that mimic legitimate brands as a means to deceive users. These fraudulent profiles can be indistinguishable from real ones.
• A platform for the intensification of threats: Exploits using social media can be amplified by the viral nature of these platforms. A single post from a fake profile can have an enormous reach within a relatively short period of time. The rapid spread of information complicates efforts to control and correct misrepresentations or other harmful content.
• A platform for targeted attacks: Social platforms enable bad actors to target groups or individual users. These attackers analyze activities on social media, adapting their methods in order to appear more credible.

Dark Strategies

• Phishing: Impersonators may take advantage of social networks for phishing scams. They may send private messages from fake profiles, luring individuals to access harmful links or disclose confidential data with the appearance of communicating as an authentic brand.
• Propagation of Malicious Software: Fake profiles on social media platforms have the potential to disseminate harmful software via seemingly harmless attachments or links. When a user interacts with these, their device may become infected, leading to stolen information or system exploits.
• Social Media Monitoring: Social platforms can be monitored for the creation of accounts that use one or more of an organization’s identifiers or common profile names. Services such as ThreatHarvest can aid in detecting unauthorized or questionable usage of a brand’s identity such as this.