The number of attacks via banking Trojans, software that steals payment data, doubled in 2022 compared with 2021, reaching almost 20 million attacks so far this year.
Cybercriminals have also developed new scam schemes, taking advantage of Black Friday in particular, including a new type of phishing scheme for the first time exploiting Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) services.
These are some of the findings from Kaspersky’s How customers got scammed amid the Black Friday season in 2022 report, aimed at educating users on staying safe during the sales season.
Banking Trojans are widely used tools in the arsenal of cybercriminals profiting from the sales season. Once the user browses in a fake online store, the Trojan saves all the data the user enters into the website’s forms. This means cybercriminals get access to a credit or debit card number, expiration date and CVV, and the victim’s site login credentials. Having obtained this information, the attackers may use it to empty the user’s bank account, use their card details for purchases or sell the data in the Dark web stores.
After a rapid drop in the number of attacks with banking Trojans in 2021, cybercriminals have returned to this type of threat with renewed strength. In 2022, the number of attacks doubled compared to the same time period in 2021. From January to October, Kaspersky products detected and prevented almost 20-million attacks, meaning that the overall growth in the number of…
