With hundreds of millions of people sheltering in place and quarantining around the world due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, and many brick and mortar stores temporarily closed, online shopping has become even more of a lifeline. As consumers ramp up their online spending, though, the criminals who hack websites to digitally "skim" credit card numbers are having a field day.
Digital skimmers—malicious code that hackers inject into legitimate websites to grab payment data—already posed a potential risk to online shoppers long before the Covid-19 crisis. But just as scamming activity spikes during peak shopping times like Black Friday, the pandemic creates prime conditions for more attacks—especially because companies are distracted and adapting to remote work. Yonathan Klijnsma, head of threat research at the security firm RiskIQ, says the company has detected a 20 percent increase in online skimming activity in March compared to February.
"E-commerce crime spikes whenever there is an event that forces or entices people to perform more online transactions," Klijnsma says. "As we’re now all isolating ourselves and homebound, it means online purchases will spike and makes it a prime time for criminals."
Two recent high-profile victims hint at that flurry of activity. Researchers from the security firm Malwarebytes published findings last week about criminal code they had spotted embedded in the website of food storage company Tupperware. Attackers had exploited vulnerabilities in the site to inject their malicious module, which then siphoned off credit card numbers and other data as consumers filled out paym ..
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