In accordance with a new report, threat actors are hosting websites for malicious campaigns centered on the Black Friday theme, with e-commerce, cryptocurrency, and travel being the top targets.
Researchers discovered that cybercrime forums in various languages are buzzing with talk about Black Friday.
According to CloudSEK researchers, who also discovered an Ethereum giveaway scam website, while some actors promote their malicious services/campaigns, others seek to use them.
“Compromised personal identifiable information (PII) and banking credentials can be used to perform unauthorized transactions and social engineering attacks,” they warned.
CloudSEK's contextual AI digital risk platform 'XVigil' discovered hundreds of registered and operational Black Friday-themed domains.
The impersonation of legitimate websites, services for Google/Facebook ads, and the spread of malicious applications were all common types of attacks.
The discovery revealed that website cloning is a common technique used by hackers of all levels of sophistication to host bogus copies of legitimate websites.
"The iconic Black Friday sale has now become a global theme, with cybercriminals of all levels and expertise attempting to launch malicious campaigns." "The majority of these campaigns misrepresent or impersonate popular brands and companies offering sales and services in order to defraud the public," Desai added.
The researchers cautioned against accepting freebies, attractive deals, or third-party solutions that appear suspicious.