English-Language Cybercrime Hub “The COM” Orchestrates Varied Global Attacks – Cyber Press

Over the past ten years, the English-speaking cybercriminal community known as “The COM” has evolved from a niche subculture focused on trading rare social media usernames (so-called “OG handles”) into an agile service-driven underground economy orchestrating a vast range of global attacks.
Early communities like Dark0de and RaidForums laid the foundation, fostering skills in data breaches, malware development, and reputation-based trading.
As forums like OGUsers popularized social engineering and SIM-swapping, the COM adapted to market realities and became a launchpad for a new generation of “callers,” “texters,” and sophisticated credential brokers.​
The demise of high-profile forums, driven by law enforcement takedowns such as the 2022 seizure of RaidForums and targeted actions against OGUsers, forced a Migration Effect.
This blended the social manipulation skills honed by OG traders with the technical pedigree of breach-focused hackers. Today’s COM is decentralized and adaptive, thriving in invite-only channels, Telegram groups, and private Discord servers, making it resilient against disruption.​
The COM’s operational backbone is the human element. Attackers deploy advanced social engineering, vishing, phishing, SIM swapping, and insider recruitment to compromise credentials and gain privileged access.
Groups like Lapsus$, ShinyHunters, and Scattered Spider (UNC3944) exemplify this, using a mix of psychological manipulation and automated intrusion to bypass technical safeguards and target everything from individual crypto wallets to multinational corporations.​
Notably, Lapsus$ leveraged social engineering not only for access but also for public spectacle, live-streaming breaches, and openly taunting both companies and law enforcement.
ShinyHunters industrialized data exfiltration, monetizing large data sets and selling access through as-a-service models.
Meanwhile, Scattered Spider and their affiliates pioneered hybrid attack vectors, mixing voice phishing with persistent access to internal networks, setting the stage for multi-step ransomware, extortion, and data-dumping campaigns.​
Today, the COM cybercrime hub operates more as a professionalized supply chain than as a loose federation. Dedicated roles callers (voice phishers), phishing kit developers, SIM swappers, initial access brokers, ransomware affiliates, and money launderers work in a modular, on-demand fashion, mirroring legitimate business ecosystems.
This specialization enables rapid scaling, risk outsourcing, and innovation while also making traditional indicators of compromise nearly obsolete. Infrastructure is short-lived, and attackers frequently leverage trusted cloud hosting and encrypted communication, hampering detection.​
Importantly, English-speaking COM specialists now collaborate with Russian-speaking cybercrime syndicates on platforms such as Exploit.in, sharing resources and techniques within a converged threat environment.
This east-west fusion grants access to advanced malware and robust laundering networks, upping the ante for defenders worldwide.​
As the line between technical and social vectors blurs, the primary security weakness is the “human perimeter.” Organizations must pivot to identity-centric defenses, robust helpdesk protections, phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication, and continuous monitoring for insider threats.
The COM’s orchestration of varied global attacks demonstrates that cybercrime is both a business and a performance targeting not just systems, but people, and the only effective defense is a blend of resilience, awareness, and adaptive response.
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