Black Friday Shoppers Targeted By Scams and Fake Domains

guest · Nov 26, 2019

Black Friday Shoppers Targeted By Scams and Fake Domains
November 26, 2019
https://threatpost.com/black-friday-shoppers-scams-fake-domains/150593/

Black Friday and Cyber Monday-related scams are nothing new — but researchers warn that this year, they are seeing an uptick in scams using more sophisticated methods to lure users to hand over their payment data.

And they’re using tricks to target the most victims as possible, including purporting to be exclusive, limited-time free giveaways offerings, or telling victims they need to further share the scam on social media in order to unlock further deals.
Research released Tuesday by ZeroFOX uncovered some of the threats that attackers are using to tap into the Black Friday shopping craze, including social-media scams and domain-impersonation scams.

“We do tend to see an uptick each year in scams that are targeting consumers as the holidays roll around,” Ashlee Benge, threat researcher at ZeroFOX, told Threatpost.
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ZeroFOX: Sales or Scams? Don’t Fall for These Black Friday “Deals”

guest · Nov 26, 2019

Skimming Scams and Redirection Schemes Phish Consumers Credentials Days Before Black Friday
November 26, 2019
https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us...onsumers-credentials-days-before-black-friday

Amid the excitement for Black Friday, cybercriminals are rolling out schemes to trick consumers into sharing their card credentials and profiting from the shopping season.

The first skimming scheme was uncovered by researchers from Malwarebytes. For some retailers and e-commerce companies, redirecting users to a website run by a partner PSP is a relatively common practice.
Researchers also noted how the fraudulent page even made sure that users fill in all the data fields with valid entries, alerting users if they had entered wrong information or missed a field.

The second scheme was discovered by a Trend Micro researcher who found certain WordPress sites infected with a redirection malware that could lead users to a phishing site.
The researcher noted that a few users have fallen for the scheme, but it is gaining some traction.
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These two cases show how threat actors use creative means to hide their schemes and trick even the most vigilant of users. They are learning to avoid the usual indicators of fraudulent activity like typos, and grammatical errors, by either coming up with new ways to distribute their phishing pages or using them in combination with other techniques.
With Black Friday only days away, consumers and retailers might be faced with more of these campaigns as the shopping season progresses.
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guest · Nov 26, 2019

Phishers Create Fake Sites as Bait for Holiday Shopping Deals
November 26, 2019
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...ake-sites-as-bait-for-holiday-shopping-deals/

While most users are familiar with phishing scams that attempt to steal a user's login credentials, phishers also use emails to lure consumers to fake retail sites in order to steal their money or sell cheap knockoffs.

In November 2018, during the holiday shopping season, researchers from security firm Check Point noticed a marked increase in phishing scams promoting e-commerce related phishing sites. This year it's even worse, with a 233% increase over last year's holiday season and it's only the middle of November.

"12 months ago, in November 2018, we witnessed a significant increase in the amount of ecommerce related phishing websites being accessed directly, or from links sent via email. And this year we can already see a similar trend. [...]" the Check Point researchers stated.
As part of this research, fake lookalike sites were found that attempt to impersonate legitimate online retail sites, but offer significant discounts in order to incentivize people to make a payment or enter their credit card details.

If you pay attention to emails and the sites that they lead to, even with all of these scams, you can still shop online and do it safely.
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Check Point: November shopping – do it the smart way!

guest · Nov 26, 2019

RiskIQ’s 2019 Black Friday E-commerce Blacklist Report: Crucial Intel for Thanksgiving Weekend
November 21, 2019
https://www.riskiq.com/blog/external-threat-management/2019-black-friday-blacklist/

In 2018, Black Friday pulled in a record $6.2 billion in online sales, a growth of 23.6% from 2017. Then, Cyber Monday became the most popular day for e-commerce sales ever, amassing $7.8 billion.
With online spending this Black Friday and Cyber Monday projected to set yet another record in 2019, attackers are showing that they’re out to get a piece of the online shopping pie.

Already, these bad holiday actors are impersonating the brands of leading e-tailers, as well as the poor security habits of consumers, to fool shoppers looking for Black Friday deals, sales, and coupons.
To compile crucial intelligence for both consumers and brands around this season’s Thanksgiving shopping weekend, RiskIQ developed our 2019 Black Friday E-commerce Blacklist report.
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As complementary findings to this data, the report includes a survey of 1,000 U.S. online shoppers about their habits and attitudes related to safe online shopping. The results showed troubling trends that play into the schemes threat actors will use over Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
For shoppers looking to score great deals while filling out their holiday shopping list, one misinformed action can result in a malware infection, stolen personal data, or a hijacked credit card number.
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RiskIQ: RiskIQ’s 2019 Black Friday E-commerce Blacklist Report

guest · Nov 15, 2020

Scams Ramp Up Ahead of Black Friday Cybercriminal Craze
November 14, 2020
https://threatpost.com/scams-black-friday-cybercriminal-craze/161239/

The number of online holiday shoppers this year is expected to skyrocket due to the pandemic – and consequently, consumers can expect an onslaught of scams, phishing attacks and other malicious activities.

“Retailers have also been hit hard by the pandemic, and will likely send out even more emails showcasing their discounts and offers, which can be easily spoofed to trick consumers,” Tony Pepper, Egress CEO, said in an email.
“Recipients hunting for a good deal may find it difficult to differentiate between the swarm of legitimate emails, and phishing attacks trying to steal their data.”
Last year, researchers said that social-media scams and domain-impersonation scams were some of the biggest types of attacks during the holiday shopping season.
This year, researchers say phishing attacks will continue to pose as a top threat during the holiday season.
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Egress’ Pepper said that consumers should always check email sender details carefully and hover over links before they click.

“If you’re still not sure, you can always reach out to the retailer via their website, to check that the email you received is genuine,’ said Pepper. “There are also lots of online resources to check out for more information, including many run by Government organizations.”
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guest · Nov 17, 2020

Phishing emails double in November in run-up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday
November 17, 2020
https://blog.checkpoint.com/2020/11...r-in-run-up-to-black-friday-and-cyber-monday/

This year has already been a record-breaker in terms of online shopping as a result of Covid-19 related restrictions and concerns, and more records are expected to be set in the run-up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday at the end of this month. During the first 10 days of November, the traditional holiday shopping season, U.S. consumers spent $21.7 billion online — a 21% increase year-over-year.

However, it isn’t just stores and buyers who are getting ready for an online spree: threat actors are also organizing their infrastructures to try and grab their share of our holiday spending, too. Check Point Research has reported a spike in hacker activity over the past six weeks, with a surge in malicious phishing campaigns targeting online shoppers in the form of “special offers.”
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In the four weeks from October 8th – November 9th, the number of weekly “special offers” related phishing campaigns have doubled globally, rising to 243 in the beginning of November, compared to 121 at the start of October

The first half of November showed an 80% increase in phishing campaigns relating to sales & shopping special offers, with emails including phrases such as “special”, “offer”, “sale”, “cheap”, “% off”

1 out of every 826 emails is a phishing email related to November shopping days, compared to less than 1 in 11,000 phishing emails at the start of October

In just two days (9th and 10th November), the amount of weekly “special offer” phishing campaigns was already higher than during the whole of the first week of October.

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guest · Nov 23, 2020

NCSC Issues Warning About Expected #BlackFriday Scams
November 23, 2020
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/ncsc-blackfriday-scams/

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has issued refreshed guidance for online shopping ahead of this week’s Black Friday.

The NCSC said that cyber-criminals are seeking to exploit an increased number of online shopping transactions in the run-up to Christmas and anticipated that consumers may slightly lower their guards during the rush to bag the best deals.
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According to a recent blog by Digital Shadows, risks to brand reputation accounted for 45% of the alerts it sent to retail clients, second only to data leakage risks.

“As we have seen before, cyber-criminals love creating phishing pages and fake social media accounts to mislead users into exposing their login credentials, personally identifiable information (PII) or payment card data,” said Kacey Clark, security researcher at Digital Shadows.
Digital Shadows also said that roughly 30% of the retail risks identified throughout its recent reporting period involved the impersonation of domains, phishing sites and phishing attempts.
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NCSC: Shopping online securely

Tips on how to shop safely online
As Black Friday approaches with most high street shops still shut, many of us are spending more time shopping online. We've updated our online shopping guidance to help you to avoid scam websites, and to purchase items safely.
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This guidance is part of the Cyber Aware campaign.
Cyber Aware is the UK government's advice on how to stay secure online during coronavirus.

Learn more on the Cyber Aware web pages.
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hawki · Nov 25, 2020

"5,000+ Black Friday and Cyber Monday scam sites registered in November...

Researchers analyzed newly created websites’ certificates, availability, registration date, and domain names for signs of phishing and scams...

First, we filtered by website domains by keyword to narrow our search. About 268,000 of the new site domains contained a word or phrase on our list of holiday shopping-related keywords...

Of the 267,807 new domains containing a Black Friday-related keyword, 5,466 probably scam and phishing sites were identified...

Researchers analyzed newly created websites’ certificates, availability, registration date, and domain names for signs of phishing and scams. The sites were checked against phishing databases of known scam sites. The research team also searched for links to phishing and scam sites on social media..."

https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/black-friday-scam-website-research/

guest · Oct 31, 2021

Fortinet warns of Black Friday scams involving PS5s, Xboxes and fake Amazon gift card generators that steal crypto
October 30, 2021
https://www.zdnet.com/article/forti...e-amazon-gift-card-generator-stealing-crypto/

Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs has discovered a new scam using the lure of an Amazon gift card generator to steal cryptocurrency from people.

Researchers with FortiGuard Labs said they found a file titled "Amazon Gift Tool.exe" that was being marketed on a publicly available file repository site as a free Amazon gift card generator.
When people download the file and open it, a malicious winlogin.exe is dropped and executed.

"The purpose of the malware is simple. If the victim tries to add money to their anon-bitcoin wallet by copying and pasting the wallet address, the malware overwrites the victim's wallet address on the clipboard with its own, resulting in the money potentially going to the attacker," the researchers explained.
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The malware also searches for addresses related to Ethereum, Binancecoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin and Ripple.

"We also found that the malicious winlogin.exe was distributed by a number of droppers with enticing names, such as Crunchyroll Breaker.exe, Netflix Tools.exe, Multi Gift Tools.exe, etc," FortiGuard Labs explained.
Cryptowallet addresses are quite large, and while cryptowallet users may write their wallet in a physical location, chances are they have this stored digitally -- either in a cold storage wallet or on their workstation, according to Manky.
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FortiGuard Labs also found another scam related to gaming consoles, attempting to lure those interested in purchasing PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S systems.

The researchers found a group of malicious PDF files with titles like, "how_much_do_xbox_one_cost_on_black_Friday.pdf" and "Walmart_black_Friday_ps5_pickup.pdf."
After victims click on the link, they are taken to phishing sites where they are asked to give out confidential information.
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Fortinet: Black Friday Scams are Coming—Online Shoppers Should Approach with Caution

Black Friday, one of the biggest retail spending days of the year, is fast approaching. According to Adobe Analytics, consumer spending on that day last year reached a whopping $9.03 billion dollars (21.6% Year-over-Year growth), and 2021 is expected to be even bigger.

Amazon is the industry’s prime online shopping web site for consumers looking to buy goods at discounted prices on Black Friday. According to an Amazon blog, sales from Black Friday through Cyber Monday last year topped $4.8 billion worldwide (60% Year-over-Year growth). Given the popularity, volume, and money related to this event, cybercriminals would not pass up on this lucrative opportunity to fool consumers any way they can for financial gain.
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