Know Your Customer-evading dark web operation uncovered

Hackread reports that massive amounts of identity documents, facial images, and biometric information have been obtained by a large-scale dark web operation that sought to circumvent Know Your Customer verification controls.

Troves of identity details have been acquired by threat actors from individuals in Latin America and Eastern Europe who voluntarily put their information on sale, according to biometric identity verification solutions provider iProov, which discovered the threat through its Security Operations Center and Biometric Threat Intelligence Service.

“What’s particularly alarming about this discovery is not just the sophisticated nature of the operation, but the fact that individuals are willingly compromising their identities for short-term financial gain,” said iProov Chief Scientific Officer Andrew Newell.

Mounting identity security risks — as evidenced by the recent exposure of thousands of ChoiceDNA customers’ data as a result of a misconfigured WordPress folder and the identification of two dozen ZKTeco biometric access system bugs — should prompt the adoption of multi-layered verification.