One of the main victims of cybercrime is people’s financial information, businesses, and financial institutions. Many reports suggest that Americans lose hundreds of millions of dollars every year to financial cybercrime.
This illicit cyber trade of stolen financial information is facilitated by online carding platforms like BriansClub. Briansclubcm.co offers hackers and cybercriminals a platform to sell their stolen goods. It encourages cybercrime. It has grown immensely in recent years.
A Risk Based Security report stated that in 2020, about 8.2 billion pieces of important financial information were breached, stolen, or hacked. A part of this heist was surely sold on BriansClub and such underground marketplaces.
The process of selling stolen financial or credit card information is also called ‘carding.’
Here, we will discuss BriansClub's contribution to reshaping the underground market by industrializing stolen credit card data and other financial data.
Screenshot of the Briansclubcm.co (Briansclub) Login Page
Though cybercrime was happening before BriansClub made an entry, it has significantly grown the dark web ecosystem for stolen financial information.
BriansClub was first discovered in a 2019 data breach that exposed their credit card pool of over 26 million. It was operating before that but no one suspected that it was operating at that massive scale.
An interesting fact about this underground marketplace is its name. BriansClub is named after ‘Brian Krebs’ who is an investigative journalist. The name attempts to mock this good man for his efforts against cybercriminals.
This is the operating mechanism of Briansclubcm.co.
In short, we can say that Briansclubcm.co makes the business model of cybercriminals a viable one.
Like every other marketplace, Brians Club has facilitated its users with some features. Here is how they make it easy to buy and sell on their platform.
BriansClub has a feeding mechanism that supplies it with fresh data regularly. These are some data sources for BriansClub.
Data breaches are the number one source of information for BriansClub. When there is a data breach at large financial institutions, some data lands at BriansClub.
Cyber criminals install malware at POS to get customers’ data. Businesses don’t know they are hacked, so they keep scanning credit cards, and the data keeps going to hackers.
There are also email phishing campaigns that entice people to give their information for something too-good-to-be-true.
Source | Method of Thefts | Notable Example |
Data Breaches | Hacking into corporate databases | 2013 Target breach |
POS Malware | Installing malware on retail POS | 2018 Saks Fifth Avenue Breach |
Phishing | Fake emails to trick users | 2020 Covid-19 phishing scams |
Skimming | Physical devices on ATMs, terminals | Gas station skimmers (ongoing) |
A Screenshot of the Briansclubcm.co (Briansclub) Register Page
BriansClub has impacted the global underground economy greatly. The forum has contributed to the overall growth of the underground economy and hiked pressure on security setups.
A Nilson report mentions that the global credit card fraud volume was $28.65 billion in 2019. Underground marketplaces like Briansclubcm.co have helped hackers and cybercriminals get paid for their nefarious work easily. This ‘ease of doing business’ is bad for the economy and people but good for hackers.
Credit card theft affects consumers and financial institutions similarly. People lose their hard-earned money and bear financial and psychological losses, while businesses bear a loss of $4.35 million on average for every data breach.
Briansclubcm.co consistent growth is their continuous effort to improve their system.
The biggest concern of any hacker or cybercriminal is to get caught. BClub cm protects its business partners by making transactions anonymous and helping them pay with cryptocurrency.
Also, the people behind BriansClub are technically very sound. The website was taken down briefly, but they stood back up within a few months. So far, they are still operating smoothly without much disruption.
BriansClub is a well-structured underground carding forum. It has a functioning business model that offers rewards to all the stakeholders, hence facilitating financial data theft.
BriansClub encourages hackers and cybercriminals and makes it easy for them to sell the proceeds of their theft. Hackers have incentives to do their work which increases risk.
The only way businesses and individuals can protect themselves is by becoming more vigilant about their online security. People should be careful about protecting their data online.
