Internet infamy drives The Com’s crime sprees

The Com doesn’t fit into a traditional definition of cybercrime. While the majority of groups tend to either be financially-motivated or working at the behest of a government, The Com’s chaotic, sprawling network, composed of mostly teenagers and young adults, are committing their crimes primarily for notoriety amongst their peers on the internet, Allison Nixon, chief research officer at Unit 221B, said Friday during a presentation at a cybersecurity conference.

The borderless, grassroots movement is now a “bottom-up social phenomenon,” Nixon said. At a presentation Friday at Sleuthcon, she compared the path members take to a sales funnel as recruits move from harassment to full-blown physical violence. 

The catalog of crimes attributed to The Com are vast, including social engineering, crypto theft, phishing, SIM swapping, extortion, sextortion, swatting, kidnapping and murder. The Justice Department last month arrested and charged two alleged leaders of the child sextortion group 764, of which members are affiliated with The Com, for directing and distributing child sexual abuse material.

Read more at CyberScoop