Security News > 2023 > June > The Great Exodus to Telegram: A Tour of the New Cybercrime Underground
Threat actors, ransomware gangs, malware developers, and others are increasingly and rapidly moving off of the "Traditional" dark web and onto illicit Telegram channels specializing in cybercrime.
Level of technical proficiency to find cybercrime channels and successfully make purchases is even lower than Tor, creating a democratization of cybercrime data.
Conversely Telegram provides perceived anonymity given the thousands of channels specializing in cybercrime, the lack of IP tracking available to security and LE professionals, and the seeming ephemeral nature of messages.
Compared to legacy dark web marketplaces, Telegram channels tend to specialize in one particular type of criminal activity.
Another type of channel we commonly see are financial fraud channels in which bank account, credit card, and refund information is given out in bulk.
We import more than one million stealer logs per week, monitor hundreds of marketplaces and forums on Tor, and also detect threats across thousands of illicit Telegram channels.