In its report ‘An Investigation into the Current Condition of Underground Markets and Cybercriminal Forums’, TrendMicro has revealed many important points and the changing trends in the underground markets. The report states that for years, sellers of illegal goods and cybercriminal services have been thriving in underground markets and forums all over the globe. But with time, these marketplaces have shifted and evolved like legitimate spaces while adapting to buyer needs, supply issues and new technology. One of the best example is the increasing social engineering scams using the words coronavirus or COVID-19.

Underground markets revolve around the selling of malware, compromised accounts, electronics and huge databases of valuable information. It also reveals the determined efforts by law enforcement appear to be having an impact entities, and remaining forums experience persistent DDoS attacks and log-in problems impacting their usefulness.On one hand, the lost of trust in the underground markets led to the creation of DarkNet Trust.

Commoditization has driven prices down for many items while pricing of other items including ransomware Remote Access Trojan online account credentials and spam services remained stable which indicates continued demand

It was created to verify vendors and increase user anonymity. On the other hand, underground markets have launched new cryptocurrency transactions, encrypted messaging and a ban on JavaScript.

The market trends of cybercrime products and services has changed since 2015, which reveals that commoditization has driven prices down for many items while pricing of other items including ransomware, Remote Access Trojan, online account credentials and spam services, remained stable which indicates continued demand. However the research has witnessed high demand for other services such as IoT botnets, with new undetected malware variants selling at higher prices. Also fake news, cyber-propaganda services and voter databases are being sold at hundreds of dollars. The report also highlights that emergence of markets for Deepfake services, AI-based gambling bots, Access-as-a-Service and Wearable device accounts.