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Flipping 419 Cybercrime Scams: Targeting the Weak and the Vulnerable

Mba, G; Onaolapo, J; Stringhini, G; Cavallaro, L; (2017) Flipping 419 Cybercrime Scams: Targeting the Weak and the Vulnerable. In: Barrett, R and Cummings, R and Agichtein, E and Gabrilovich, E, (eds.) Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on World Wide Web Companion. (pp. pp. 1301-1310). ACM Green open access

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Abstract

Most of cyberscam-related studies focus on threats perpetrated against the Western society, with a particular attention to the USA and Europe. Regrettably, no research has been done on scams targeting African countries, especially Nigeria, where the notorious and (in)famous 419 advanced-fee scam, targeted towards other countries, originated. How- ever, as we know, cybercrime is a global problem affecting all parties. In this study, we investigate a form of advance fee fraud scam unique to Nigeria and targeted at Nigerians, but unknown to the Western world. For the study, we rely substantially on almost two years worth of data harvested from an on-line discussion forum used by criminals. We complement this dataset with recent data from three other active forums to consolidate and generalize the research. We apply machine learning to the data to understand the criminals' modus operandi. We show that the criminals exploit the socio-political and economic problems prevalent in the country to craft various fraud schemes to defraud vulnerable groups such as secondary school students and unemployed graduates. The result of our research can help potential victims and policy makers to develop measures to counter the activities of these criminal groups.

Type: Proceedings paper
Title: Flipping 419 Cybercrime Scams: Targeting the Weak and the Vulnerable
Event: WWW '17, 26th International Conference on World Wide Web Companion, 3-7 April 2017, Perth, Australia
ISBN-13: 9781450349147
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1145/3041021.3053892
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1145/3041021.3053892
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © 2017 International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2). Published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10046962
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