Fortinet Fortiguard Labs Observes Darknet Activity Targeting The 2024 United States Presidential Election
Fortnet News, Tuesday, October 15th, 2024
Phishing scams aimed at voters, malicious domain registrations impersonating candidates, and other threat activity designed to exploit unassuming victims take center stage as the U.S. election approaches
Key findings from the threat intelligence report include:
Phishing Scams Targeting Voters Leading Up to the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election: Threat actors are selling affordable phishing kits on the darknet designed to target voters and donors by impersonating the presidential candidates and their campaigns.
Malicious Domain Registrations on the Rise: More than 1,000 new potentially malicious domains have also been registered since the beginning of 2024 that follow particular patterns and incorporate election-related content and candidates, suggesting that threat actors are leveraging the heightened interest surrounding the election to lure unsuspecting targets and potentially conduct malicious activities.
Darknet Landscape: Billions of records from the U.S. are for sale on darknet forums, including Social Security numbers (SSNs), personally identifiable information (PII), and credentials that could be used in misinformation campaigns and lead to fraudulent activity, phishing scams, and account takeover; approximately 3% of the posts on darknet forums involve databases related to business and government entities.
Ransomware Landscape: FortiGuard Labs researchers noted a 28% increase in ransomware attacks against the U.S. government year-over-year based on observed leak sites.