Scammers take over social media

In Q4 2024, cyber threats reached unprecedented levels, with 2.55 billion attacks blocked, equating to 321 threats every second.

In this Help Net Security video, Luis Corrons, Security Evangelist at Gen, discusses a new Gen report that highlights a troubling trend: social media has become a prime target for cybercriminals, who are leveraging AI-driven scams, malvertising, and phishing tactics to exploit users at scale.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Facebook is the biggest target, accounting for 56% of all social media threats, followed by YouTube (24%), X (10%), and Reddit/Instagram (3% each).
• Malvertising, e-shop scams, and phishing are the top three threats targeting people on social media. Cybercriminals capitalized on the increased online shopping traffic in Q4 to carry out scams.
• Telegram sees 6x more scams than WhatsApp, despite WhatsApp’s larger user base, as criminals exploit Telegram’s privacy features to evade detection.

The last quarter of 2024 also saw some of the biggest financial scams of the year, including:

• Deepfake crypto scam: Timed around the election, hackers hijacked YouTube accounts and uploaded AI-generated videos of figures like Elon Musk to steal $7M from victims – the biggest payout.
• Mobile banking trojans surged, disguising themselves as popular dating apps and familiar brands like Visa and Chrome, to steal users banking information.
• Spyware-infected apps gained popularity through official app stores, extorting victims and threatening to expose their private data.