The dark side of Black Friday and Cyber Monday: 400% increase in phishing attacks
November 2019 by Zscaler
Black Friday and Cyber Monday mark the traditional start to the holiday shopping season. Yet, with 39% of shoppers starting before then, cybercriminals have kicked off the season early too. This year, Zscaler’s ThreatLabZ team has recorded malware campaigns that have begun early on, as threat actors take notice of the increased activity on shopping and online payment sites, and adjust their phishing kits accordingly. In fact, Zscaler has reported a more than 400 percent increase in phishing activity between the first 14 days in October and the first 14 days of November.
The team observed increasing phishing activity targeting well-known online shopping sites as well as phishing attacks targeting mobile phones, site skimmers looking to harvest credentials from compromised e-shops, scams posing as gift cards – with Amazon the most likely culprit – and banking trojans trying to turn PCs or mobile devices into an ATM.