The Telekopye toolkit allows scammers to create phishing websites, send fraudulent SMS messages and emails, and target popular Russian and non-Russian online marketplaces.
While toolkits are nothing new, the frequency, speed of time-to-market, and the functionality available to the “every-scammer” is becoming truly frightening. The latest toolkit, Telekopye, spotted by security researchers at Eset, is a self-contained attack-in-a-box, where attackers (once they gain the trust of the potential buyer) easily can have a phishing website setup in minutes, with corresponding emails and texts created that point victims back to the attacker-controlled website.
The toolkit uses a bot that interacts with the Telegram Messenger web app to create and send messages to would-be victims. According to Eset, all that scammers need is “a silver tongue to persuade their victims.” Given the availability of powerful large language model AI tools, that "silver tongue" is no longer really a barrier to cyber criminals.
If that doesn’t scream “no experience necessary”, I don’t know what does.
And while marketplaces are generally consumer-focused, I wanted to bring this latest toolkit to your attention as it represents just how sophisticated and yet simple the toolkits are getting, making it easy for literally anyone to jump into the cybercriminal game.
Make sure your users stay vigilant – whether doing work or being online for personal use – through continual security awareness training. The future of attacks looks like threat actors will simply need an attack angle, construct a custom toolkit, and will put it out for sale on the dark web – enabling attackers to perform the up-front social engineering necessary to kick off a new scam.
Here's how it works:
