Huione Guarantee Involved in Facilitating Online Scams in Southeast Asia
The well-known Huione Guarantee is Huione, the Cambodian conglomerate, running an online marketplace that came into the limelight for allegedly promoting online scams in Southeast Asia. In recent years, a research report by Elliptic, and only they helped to bring the problem of these funds to the attention of regulatory authorities. The blockchain being a public ledger also facilitates the tracking of transactions; this turns out to be the biggest benefit of the blockchain.
Blockchain Analytics Unveil Cryptocurrency Transactions
The Elliptic research team applied blockchain analytics in the determination of the cryptocurrency transactions happening via Huione Guarantee. The fact that the blockchain is transparent made the monitoring and prevention of such crypto transactions enjoyable.
Huione Guarantee Primarily Operates in Chinese
It is often in the Chinese language that the platform operates, using instant messaging apps maintained by various merchants. Middle persons engage with the movement of data and money laundering activities, such that the fraud involved is the result—selling personal data among them—. Furthermore, the company offers workers with software to develop or amend the sites containing information utilized in the torture of workers in the scamming places.
Predominant Use of Tether for Transactions
Notwithstanding the fact that there are other popular payment methods like bank transfers and payment apps, a major portion of the business is handled through Tether cryptocurrency. By means of Elliptic’s inquiry, the detection and documentation of hundreds of encrypted addresses constituted with Huione Guarantee and its sellers, letting up exchanges, and merchants to check transactions and prevent the laundering of the illegal money. This even helps the authorities in tracking the payments and throwing the fraudsters behind bars.
Rising Use of AI in Illicit Activities
In the 2024 report of Elliptic, there was a mention of the fact the same is being utilized more often than not for criminal purposes such as the states sponsored cyber attacks and deepfake scams. The deception schemes that use deepfake films of celebrities such as Elon Musk and ex-Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong are already on the point. Moreover, the report tackled dark web forums whose AI is used to desist from setting up a simple crypto wallet because it introduces applications leveraging python for bypassing security controls and resetting passwords of a user, the weaknesses of strong authentication systems, and so on, which in turn further complicates the already hard job of security- and law-enforcing bodies.
Crypto Market Recovers Over Half of Stolen Funds in Q2
The development of scams is met with a high response of the cyber market emphasizing the huge ability to recover even on the highest level of illegal activity with 77% fund recovery rate in Q2 2024. The information provided in the Hacken’s Web3 Security Report Q2 2024 reveals that $347.4 million were recovered or frozen of the total $512.9 million stolen.
Proliferation of Crypto Scams on X
Cryptocurrency scams have significantly profited from X, with researchers attributing a sizable proportion of all cryptocurrency scams to the culprits on the platform. Scam Sniffer, a web3 antiscam company, pointed out that more than $50 million is being lost every month specifically due to the fact that other account owners on X.com are impersonated. Binance co-founder Yi He, who had something to worry about the instance of cryptocurrency scams on the site X, was saying whether Musk will solve the issue.
