Impersonation-as-a-Service
Impersonation-as-a-Service: Characterizing the Emerging Criminal Infrastructure for User Impersonation at Scale

    
    
                
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            Abstract:In this paper we provide evidence of an emerging criminal infrastructure enabling impersonation attacks at scale. Impersonation-as-a-Service (ImpaaS) allows attackers to systematically collect and enforce user profiles (consisting of user credentials, cookies, device and behavioural fingerprints, and other metadata) to circumvent risk-based authentication system and effectively bypass multi-factor authentication mechanisms. We present the ImpaaS model and evaluate its implementation by analysing the operation of a large, invite-only, Russian ImpaaS platform providing user profiles for more than $260'000$ Internet users worldwide. Our findings suggest that the ImpaaS model is growing, and provides the mechanisms needed to systematically evade authentication controls across multiple platforms, while providing attackers with a reliable, up-to-date, and semi-automated environment enabling target selection and user impersonation against Internet users as scale.
    

    
    
  
      Submission history From: Michele Campobasso [view email]                  [v1]
        Wed, 9 Sep 2020 15:08:51 UTC (1,360 KB)
    [v2]
        Thu, 5 Nov 2020 15:45:39 UTC (1,360 KB)
