Security News > 2020 > July > 820% jump in e-gift card bot attacks since COVID-19 lockdowns began

Researchers with cybersecurity firm PerimeterX have released new data showing an 820% increase in e-gift card scams since March, when most people began staying home to protect themselves from COVID-19.

"E-gift card attacks usually target well-known brands because their e-gift cards are 'hot goods' in the secondary market. Amongst the brands protected by PerimeterX, we saw e-gift card attacks stay fairly steady in the e-commerce vertical since the COVID-19 lockdown started we saw a skyrocketing increase of 820% in such attacks, mainly in online food delivery services," PerimeterX's Yossi Barkshtein wrote in a blog this week.

A sophisticated e-gift card attack on a top-five US retailer lasted around two months-a very long time for a massive bot attack. During this time, tens of thousands of requests to e-gift card pages were malicious."

He cites numbers from TotalRetail that show almost 20% of all holiday gift card sales in 2019 came from digital gift cards.

"E-gift card bot attacks are often hard to detect. Most of these attacks are conducted using botnets that are highly distributed and use multiple IP addresses, multiple ASNs and many different devices. The result is attacks that mimic human behavior and are complicated to detect and block," added Barkshtein.

News URL

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/820-jump-in-e-gift-card-bot-attacks-since-covid-19-lockdowns-began/#ftag=RSS56d97e7