Masked Actors

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Most people experience fraud as a single event. A suspicious text message, a fake investment opportunity, or a phone call from someone pretending to be their bank.
The reality is that modern fraud is an organised global economy, powered by criminal networks that continuously adapt their tactics while relying on the same psychological manipulation to deceive victims at scale.
Understanding how that economy evolves requires intelligence from two very different front lines: the investigators working to dismantle criminal networks, and the people encountering new scams every day. 
In this episode, hosts Gary Ruddell and former INTERPOL Director of Cybercrime Craig Jones are joined by cybersecurity educator, strategist and digital safety advocate Caitlin Sarian, better known to millions as "Cybersecurity Girl" to explore the two front lines of the modern fraud economy. Drawing on perspectives from international cybercrime investigations, threat intelligence operations and a community of millions reporting scams as they happen, together they examine what each side sees that the other doesn't and what it takes to transform intelligence into action against a threat that adapts in real time.
By understanding who these actors are and how they operate, you can better anticipate threats and protect yourself in an increasingly hostile digital world.
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For years, stronger authentication was seen as the answer to online fraud. As passwords became easier to steal, organisations turned to stronger forms of verification, from facial recognition and voice authentication to digital identity checks. 
But cybercriminals are now weaponising those too. 
This episode revisits GoldFactory, the threat actor behind some of the first large-scale campaigns designed to harvest biometric data for financial fraud. As cyber criminals increasingly target the systems used to verify identity, the group raises a much bigger question: how do we establish trust in a world where identity itself can be manipulated and exploited?
Hosts Gary Ruddell and former INTERPOL Cybercrime Director Craig Jones are joined by an author, advisor and one of the world’s leading experts on digital financial services and digital identity - David Birch. Together they examine the implications of biometric theft, the future of digital identity in an AI driven world, and how we can rebuild trust where proving who we are online is becoming increasingly complex.
By understanding who these actors are and how they operate, you can better anticipate threats and protect yourself in an increasingly hostile digital world.
Subscribe to learn more about Group-IB's top 10 Masked Actors  - and stay one step ahead in the fight against cybercrime.
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Contactless payments have become such a routine part of everyday life that we rarely think twice about how they are secured. For decades, every contactless transaction has been built on the assumption that your card needs to be physically present to make the purchase. 
Now, there is one Chinese-language Fraud-as-a-Service operation that has found a way to break that assumption. First uncovered by Group-IB researchers, TX-NFC relays stolen card data to a fraudster’s device and executes a transaction at a physical point-of-sale terminal, all with the victim's card in an entirely different country. TX-NFC is more than a novel fraud technique; it’s a commercial criminal ecosystem of social engineering operators, Telegram marketplaces and money mules operating in the shadows to turn stolen credentials into profit at scale.
In this episode, hosts Gary Ruddell and former INTERPOL Director of Cybercrime Craig Jones are joined by Neira Jones, an independent advisor, board-level strategist, and international expert in payments, fraud, and cybersecurity. Together, they trace the criminal supply chain behind TX-NFC, explore why traditional fraud controls struggle to detect it, and discuss what we can do to ensure our money stays safe when proximity can no longer protect us. 
By understanding who these actors are and how they operate, you can better anticipate threats and protect yourself in an increasingly hostile digital world.
Subscribe to learn more about Group-IB's top 10 Masked Actors  - and stay one step ahead in the fight against cybercrime.
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Group-IB Threat Intelligence on X:   https://www.x.com/GroupIB_TI
Group-IB on X:  https://www.x.com/GroupIB
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Threat researchers work deep in the digital underground, mapping adversaries, exposing tactics, and turning fragments of intelligence into protection that actively stops attacks. Despite the impact of their work, the reality of what they do remains largely hidden from view.
In this episode of Masked Actors, Group-IB’s Gary Ruddell is joined by Anastasia Tikhonova, Global Threat Research Lead at Group-IB and author of the High-Tech Crime Trends report. 
With over a decade spent tracking advanced persistent threat activity linked to nation-state actors, Anastasia pulls back the curtain on what it really means to operate on the front lines of cyber defence. From following evidence trails through the dark web to uncovering emerging threats before they strike, this is the inside story of the people tracking cybercriminals where they operate best: in the shadows.
By understanding who these actors are and how they operate, you can better anticipate threats and protect yourself in an increasingly hostile digital world.
Subscribe to learn more about Group-IB's top 10 Masked Actors  - and stay one step ahead in the fight against cybercrime.
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Group-IB Threat Intelligence on X:   https://www.x.com/GroupIB_TI
Group-IB on X:  https://www.x.com/GroupIB
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Can you recognise every employee in your organisation? Most companies cannot — and attackers know it.
A routine IT request comes in from a senior leader locked out of their account. Everything checks out, so access is restored. Except it wasn't them. In that moment, you've handed the keys to Scattered Spider — a group that has spent three years proving that human trust is a more reliable attack surface than any software vulnerability.
Group-IB's High-Tech Crime Trends Report 2026 identifies supply chain attacks as the defining force reshaping today's threat landscape, and Scattered Spider sits at the centre of that story. What looks like social engineering is, in reality, a supply chain attack in disguise — one that can turn a single compromised integration into a cascade affecting hundreds of downstream organisations, halt production lines across four countries, and register on a national economy's GDP.
In this episode, Gary Ruddell and former INTERPOL Director of Cybercrime Craig Jones are joined by Seán Doyle, Lead at the World Economic Forum's Cybercrime Atlas, where international specialists work together to identify, map, and disrupt criminal networks at scale. Together they examine how a group with no zero-days and no nation-state backing became one of the most disruptive cybercriminal threats operating today — and what it actually takes to build a line of defence when trust itself is the attack vector.
By understanding who these actors are and how they operate, you can better anticipate threats and protect yourself in an increasingly hostile digital world.
Subscribe to learn more about Group-IB's top 10 Masked Actors  - and stay one step ahead in the fight against cybercrime.
FOLLOW GROUP-IB
Group-IB Threat Intelligence on X:   https://www.x.com/GroupIB_TI
Group-IB on X:  https://www.x.com/GroupIB
Group-IB on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/group-ib
Group-IB on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groupibHQ/ 
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