Black Friday Cautionary Tales: Phishing, Card Cracking, and Gift Card Fraud
Christmas shopping season is a lucrative time of year for cybercriminals. In the UK alone, shoppers lost more than £15 million to fraud in the run-up to Christmas 2020. Of this, £2.5 million was lost over a single weekend: Black Friday to Cyber Monday. Online shopping scams are expected to ramp up ahead of Black Friday this year, too. Card cracking is particularly high risk, as heightened traffic volumes make it more difficult for many retailers to detect high volume brute force attacks.