Cybercrooks hold their own Black Friday sales

During the popular annual Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales period, it wasn't just retailers holding sales. Cybercriminals seeking to profit from the annual spike in online sales held their own versions of the events.

According to analysis from CyberInt Research, the sales period stimulated increased activity on the deep and dark web, with hacking forums holding their own sales of malicious tools, as well as dicussions about the types of threats they were instigating and offering.

Meanwhile, phishing and unofficial marketplaces created hundreds of new domains in an attempt to swindle holiday shoppers.

Overall, threat actor chatter on the deep and dark web indicated a 200% increase in refund fraud-related activities, including a 150% increase in discussion of compromised accounts and 90% about e-gift cards. Chatter about attack tools meanwhile increased 20%.

But cyberthreat indicators averaged only 30% higher than usual threat traffic over the period — lower than expected based on the increased volume of shopping.

CyberInt nevertheless reported that there was a significant volume of brute force attacks during the period. While most attacks were successfully blocked, this required the reallocation of resources that were needed to meet the spike in legitimate traffic, resulting in dissatisfaction among customers.

The company predicts that holiday-related cybercrime will continue to increase up until Christmas, after which time there is expected to be an even greater rise in refund fraud.

Image credit: ©iStockphoto.com/Yunus Arakon

Please follow us and share on Twitter and Facebook. You can also subscribe for FREE to our weekly newsletter and quarterly magazine.