Hackers Poised for Black Friday Assault

SOURCE: CIO


November 20, 2007 — Network World — You know retailers are ready for Black Friday -- but so are hackers poised to launch a slew of Web-based attacks against consumers. Your money and personal information could be at risk.


"Freebies may be freebies in the sense that you get free malware," says Jamz Yaneza, a senior threat researcher at Trend Micro.

A common scam is to pick the hot toy of the season and send out a spam e-mail blast offering it for much less than the typical price, Henry says. Victims end up entering credit card information on malicious sites designed to look like well-known, trusted ones. They might also unknowingly download a keylogger that can steal personal information people type in when making any kind of Internet transaction.

"Be leery of sites being advertised [in e-mail that might be spam]. In all likelihood you're being directed to a malware-connected site," Henry says. "Do not click on URLs within e-mails even for well-known public sites."


Fraud losses related to U.S. e-commerce will top $3.6 billion in 2007, up 20% from last year, according to a report by the vendor CyberSource this month.