To judge from the state of the average cyber security writer’s inbox in the week leading up to Black Friday, the annual frenzied festival of consumerism, it’s time to panic.
The sky is falling in. Every retail website has been hacked by cyber criminals, all your credit card numbers have already been stolen and used on gambling sites, and this is therefore a very short article. Game over, man.
Unfortunately, whether you’re reading this as a shopper or a retailer, there is good reason to be concerned (also, this is a long article). Already, researchers have observed active threat groups testing out new credit card fraud techniques and tricks, and anecdotally, the first few weeks of November saw a dramatic slump – the much-reported breach of US department store chain Macy’s notwithstanding.
Even without the triple threat of Black Friday (traditionally associated with Thanksgiving but now exported beyond US borders), Cyber Monday (the online version of Black Friday), and the Christmas holidays (speaks for itself), retail fraud is already up this year, at least according to Kaspersky, which recently produced statistics claiming that attacks targeted directly at…
