In the News
Online retailers are being used as a middle-man in financial exploitation. In Two New Carding Bots Threaten E-Commerce Sites, Sarah Coble at InfoSecurity Magazine discusses the new ways malicious attackers are verifying credit cards through e-commerce sites for future use on the black market for financial gains. Coble explains that these two bots make small online purchases to confirm that a stolen credit card number can be used for financial exploitation on the black market. Coble details that one of these bots mimics human shopping patterns by creating a full shopping cart while the other verifies the card without adding items to an online cart. Coble stresses the importance of online retailers to increase the restrictions on purchases to prevent some of these attacks.
Our Take
Online shoppers are thriving off of the convenience of making purchases across various industries in the comfort of their own homes thanks to their smartphone or computer. To make this process even easier, online accounts allow customers to store their financial payment information for future use and instant payment. Though this making the checkout process easier, kit also means that data breaches or exposures leave attackers with endless financial payment numbers. These attackers verify that these numbers are still active or legitimate by attempting to make purchases through other online retailers with various degrees of sophistication. While it may be difficult for you to know if your card information was stolen before its used maliciously, it is crucial that you are on the lookout to see if any purchases appear on your financial statements that you did not make. Identifying any false payments, especially around the busy holiday shopping season, can allow you to get ahead of an attacker and cancel your card before you become a victim of extreme financial exploitation.
Recommendations
How can you better protect your financial information?
- Understand the risks of putting your personal information into the world, and only share what you have to
- Make purchases at reputable online retailers
- Minimize the number of accounts that have direct access to your bank account or card numbers
- Check your email, financial accounts, and credit reports regularly for abnormal activities
- Stay up to date on the news regarding recent security breaches to see if you may have been affected