‘Industrial-Scale Fraud Operations’: Global Criminal Organization Operated Slave Compounds in Asia Behind Massive Malware-as-a-Service Hydra Targeting More Than 35 Government Agencies Every Month

• Infoblox and Chong Lua Dao discover a global MaaS platform
• Spoofed domains harvest KYC data, intercept text messages and empty bank accounts
• Captive workers trafficked to Cambodian fraud complex linked to elites

Malware operators – the people who send phishing emails and guide people through the infection chain – don’t always do so willingly: they are sometimes brought to scam centers and forced to work there.

One such global criminal organization was discovered by Infoblox security researchers Threat Intel and Vietnamese nonprofit Chong Lua Dao, who recently observed an increase in anomalous DNS traffic on Infoblox customer networks, leading them to a previously undocumented malware-as-a-service (MaaS) platform.