Facebook, Microsoft, X sue Vietnamese 'trickers' many times

The "tricker" group's office was revealed by X. Photo: The Independent .

The online money making model (MMO) has flourished in Vietnam in recent years. Many people have become rich quickly by taking advantage of opportunities from online platforms. However, many cases of policy abuse and illegal tricks have been discovered. In the online money making world, these people are called “trickers”, who simply use simple tricks to bypass the platform, instead of high-tech hacks.

Many Vietnamese individuals have been sued by big tech companies in the US for abusing their platforms, causing tens of millions of dollars in damages. In addition to foreign companies, Vietnamese authorities have also prosecuted many cases of using high technology to appropriate assets through social media accounts.

Facebook accuses 4 Vietnamese of causing $36 million in damage

In June 2021, Meta (then Facebook) filed a lawsuit against four Vietnamese individuals, including Nguyen Them H., Le K., Nguyen Quoc B. and Pham Huu D. for fraud and appropriation of advertising accounts.

According to Facebook, the four used a technique known as “session hijacking” or “cookie hijacking” to break into the accounts of advertising and marketing agency employees. Once in, they would run unauthorized ads.

Evidence of abuse of Facebook policies presented in the dossier. Photo: Nhat Minh.

First, the group uploaded fake “Ads Manager for Facebook” apps to Google Play and tricked users into downloading them. The fake apps asked users to log in to their Facebook advertising accounts. Once they had their login information, the group would grant permission to the scam sites to serve ads to users.

In addition to defrauding advertising agency employees, the group is accused of supporting online fraud. According to Facebook, the group ran an estimated $36 million worth of unauthorized ads. "Facebook has refunded the victims and helped them secure their accounts," a Facebook representative wrote in a press release on June 30.

This group then used the stolen postpaid accounts to sell ads to people in need at cheaper prices, making illegal profits.

750 million fake Microsoft accounts created

In a December 2023 article, Microsoft said it had tracked down and discovered the Storm-1152 cybercrime group. This organization set up a website and social media channels to sell accounts, tools to support fraud and bypass CAPTCHA.

“To date, Storm-1152 has created and sold approximately 750 million fraudulent Microsoft accounts, generating millions of dollars in illicit revenue and making it more expensive for Microsoft and other companies to stop their criminal activity,” the company said in a statement.

After investigation, the company identified some of the people behind Storm-1152's activities as Duong Dinh Tu, Linh Van Nguyen (Nguyen Van Linh), and Tai Van Nguyen from Vietnam.

Websites seized by Microsoft under an order issued by the Southern District Court of New York. Photo: Microsoft.

"These individuals operated and wrote code for illegal websites, posted detailed step-by-step instructions on how to use their products via video , and provided chat services to assist customers using their fraudulent services," Microsoft's website emphasized.

Storm-1152 plays a key role in the highly specialized cybercrime services ecosystem. Fraudsters typically need thousands of accounts to support their criminal activities. Instead of spending time creating them manually, they can simply buy accounts from Storm-1152 or other groups.

"This allows criminals to focus on their core goals of phishing, spam, ransomware, and other forms of abuse. Storm-1152 and similar organizations help cybercriminals operate more efficiently and effectively," Microsoft said in a statement.

X sues 8 people for creating fake interactions

In a complaint to the US federal prosecution agency, X said a “fake click” creation facility in Vietnam had abused the platform’s policy of paying users. The people named in the lawsuit by the social network include Le Dinh Chung, Nguyen Nhu Duc, Do Viet Khanh, Nguyen Viet Kieu, Do Xuan Long, Do Minh Thang, Nguyen Ngoc Thanh, Phan Ngoc Tuan.

A massive fake click farm in Vietnam is accused of illegally profiting from Elon Musk’s X platform. Photo: US District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

The federal complaint against X alleges that the click-bait operation was run by a group of eight people in Hanoi , Vietnam, who posted automatically generated content to a network of fake X profiles, set up using stolen identities “to engage in organized manipulation of the platform,” according to the plaintiffs.

Accounts within this network will then interact with each other's content. The ultimate goal is to trick platform X and earn revenue.

X’s complaint does not specify the assets the group obtained. Evidence from the payments shows that money was transferred to at least 125 bank accounts in the United States under false names. They were then transferred to records under real names, at nine banks in Vietnam, in more than 1,700 separate transactions.

Source: https://znews.vn/nhieu-lan-facebook-microsoft-x-kien-tricker-viet-nam-post1556441.html