Cybercriminals have not finished collecting their holiday gifts. That warning from Kaspersky Lab follows a 23% increase jump over the previous year in malware encounters by users.
Consumers who used their credit cards during the holidays should keep an eye on their transaction information in the coming months, Kaspersky Lab security expert Oleg Kupreev advised. “Typically, criminals don’t start to withdraw money from stolen cards right after the theft. They often wait for several weeks or even months to prepare for cashing out.”
In its holiday 2016 financial cyberthreats overview Kaspersky Lab suggested it is also too early to draw conclusions on the success of fraud campaigns during the 2016 holiday season, because usually criminals don’t cash in stolen payment card credentials immediately. They wait several months in order to make fraudulent transactions less suspicious to the anti-fraud systems of financial organizations.
However, the cybersecurity firm did submit there were multiple attempts to fraudulently exploit the high sales season.
The percentage of financial phishing attacks blocked by Kaspersky Lab products in the fourth quarter of 2016 was higher than the total average for the year. “Moreover, the fourth-quarter 2016 results are the highest we’ve seen so far,” Kaspersky Lab noted. The cybersecurity firm discovered 48.13% of all phishing attacks focused on collecting users’ financial data, which is 0.65% higher than the average share of financial phishing in 2016, and 4.75% more than in the same period in 2015.
“In general, we can’t say that the holiday period in 2016 has seen an unusually high increase of phishing attacks; however, our major hypothesis, stated in previous reports, did confirm cybercriminals would exploit Black Friday and Christmas topics and dates,” Kaspersky Labs said.
The financial malware landscape also showed some interesting changes in the last three months of 2016. During the fourth quarter, 2016 Kaspersky Lab registered attacks with financial malware against 319,692 users worldwide. That is 22.49% more than during the same period in 2015, when 261,000 users were attacked, and 2.7% more than in 2014. “It is hard to say if such an increase has been provoked by criminal interest in the holiday season; however, data on the dynamics of attacks shows that just like phishing scammers, financial malware operators tried to connect their activity to particular dates,” Kaspersky Lab wrote.
A major increase happened before (on Dec. 22) and after (from Dec. 25-27). “This may be explained by the fact that most e-commerce activities happen around these dates: people buy gifts and goods for Christmas and the New Year, travel for vacations and spend money on entertainment,” Kaspersky emphasized.
In November, Kaspersky Lab conducted a brief analysis of the threat landscape over the holiday period, from October to December in 2014 and 2015, to find out if the number of financial cyberattacks during this time differs to that usually seen throughout the year. The retrospective analysis found that the percentage of phishing attacks during this period was higher than the average yearly rate. The dynamics of financial malware attacks also clearly showed that in 2014 and 2015, criminals staged their malicious campaigns to match dates around the Black Friday/Cyber Monday period, and also around Christmas and the New Year.
Kaspersky Lab advised people and organizations to take precaution against attacks that steals money or financial information. Although the holiday season is over, it is still imperative to stay safe when carrying out financial operations online.
