As phishing-as-a-service goes industrial, Microsoft takes down a marketplace behind 1 billion messages

Microsoft says it has dismantled a criminal marketplace responsible for 1 billion malicious messages. Working with international authorities and several tech and cybersecurity companies in a nearly year-long investigation, Redmond identified and took down Yam Store, a coordinated underground network dealing in commercial phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS). The network allowed cybercriminals to readily purchase, and very quickly deploy, pre-made kits they could use in phishing attacks to steal data and credentials. Microsoft said the takedown began as a simple investigation based on a tip from Japanese authorities. “Working together, and with the assistance of AI tools, we connected accounts, websites, and infrastructure that initially appeared unrelated, helping expose the broader criminal marketplace behind them,” Steven Masada, associate general counsel and GM for Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit, wrote in a blog post. “What appears to be a simple scam message is often the visible end of a much larger transnational cybercriminal operation.” The evolving PhaaS marketplace Collectively, YAM Store and the kits and tools sold within it enabled the sending of more than 1 billion messages t…

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