Providing insights from transactions processed globally from April to June 2024, the Q2 2024 Global Identity Fraud report unveiled extensive trends in large-scale organised identity fraud. Also, AU10TIX recorded the highest number of automated bot attacks affecting social media platforms, with the sector seeing 16% of all attacks in Q2 compared to 3% in Q1. At the same time, the APAC region was more vulnerable to bot attacks targeting the financial sector, which saw a focused mega-attack comprising over 5,000 fraudulent onboarding attempts.
Developed to imitate real human identities and behaviours and often optimised with deep fake technology to deliver convincing profiles, these impersonation bots have significantly increased in use, with bad actors leveraging them to create fake social media accounts, spread misinformation and malware, manipulate online interactions, and distort public discourse. AU10TIX found that besides affecting politics and public opinion, these profiles frequently lead to the creation of banking, payment, and cryptocurrency accounts that are then utilised for fraudulent purposes, including money laundering.
Moreover, supported by the emergence of AI-enabled Fraud-as-a-Service (FaaS) companies which allow the development of large-scale attacks, the APAC region is increasingly vulnerable to financial-related identity fraud. Besides the Q2 attack, as per
Sumsub's 2023 Identity Fraud Report, the region faced a 1,530% expansion in deep fake incidents and a fraud rate that grew by 24% between 2022 and 2023. This lead to the APAC region having the world’s highest fraud rate, with 3,27% of all transactions being fraudulent.
Despite this, AU10TIX’s analysts have confidence that INTERPOL’s HAECHI IV and First Light operation of Q4 2023 and Q1 2024 focusing on online financial crime and social engineering fraud interrupted criminal networks conducting their operations in the payments industry. This is backed by a 17% decline in attacks targeting the payments sector in Q2, as detailed by AU10TIX in its report.
As part of its Q1 2024 Global Identity Fraud Report, AU10TIX provided three actionable insights to support organisations in safeguarding their operations against identity fraud, including:
