{"id":34667,"date":"2019-03-20T15:31:32","date_gmt":"2019-03-20T07:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=34667"},"modified":"2019-03-20T15:31:33","modified_gmt":"2019-03-20T07:31:33","slug":"cybercriminals-employ-formjacking-to-earn-money-disrupt-business-operations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2019\/03\/20\/cybercriminals-employ-formjacking-to-earn-money-disrupt-business-operations\/","title":{"rendered":"Cybercriminals employ formjacking to earn money, disrupt business operations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The decline in cryptojacking and ransomware activities due to the decreasing cryptocurrency values and increasing adoption of cloud and mobile computing prompted cybercriminals to employ alternative methods such as formjacking to make money, according to Symantec\u2019s Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR) Volume 24.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Symantec\u2019s\nISTR provides an overview of the threat landscape, including insights into\nglobal threat activity, cyber criminal trends and motivations for attackers.\nThe report analyzes data from Symantec\u2019s Global Intelligence Network which\nrecords events from 123 million attack sensors worldwide, blocks 143 million\nthreats daily and monitors threat activities in more than 157 countries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According\nto Sherif El-Nabawi, vice president, sales engineering and service provider\nsales, APAC and Japan at Symantec, all the time, attack groups are focused on\nhow to get rich. They look for schemes where they can utilize the ability to\ndeploy whether it\u2019s a software, or social engineering tactic, and the ability\nto get money quickly in a short amount of time and then basically shift to\nanother group of users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Formjacking\nis very prominent in 2018. These are attacks that involve virtual ATM skimming\nwhere cybercriminals inject malicious code into retailers\u2019 websites to steal\nshoppers\u2019 payment card details. El-Nabawi claimed there was an average of over\n4,800 websites that were compromised by formjacking code every month.\nWell-known retailers\u2019 online payment websites including Ticketmaster and\nBritish Airways as well as small and medium-sized retailers were compromised\nwith formjacking in recent months.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Millions\nof dollars went to cybercriminals last year through stolen information from credit\ncards and sales from Dark web. Just 10 credit cards stolen from each\ncompromised website could result in up to $2.2-million in earnings each month\nfor cyber criminals as a single card can fetch up to $45 on underground markets.\nWith more than 380,000 credit cards stolen, the British Airways attack alone may\nhave allowed criminals to earn more than $17-million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On\nthe other hand, El-Nabawi noted that Symantec managed to block 3.7-million formjacking\nattacks on endpoints throughout the year across all their customers, with\nnearly a third of all detections occurring during November and December, the\nbusiest online shopping period of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last\nyear saw a decline in activity and diminishing returns for cryptojacking and\nransomware due to the decreasing cryptocurrency values and the growing adoption\nof cloud and mobile computing, rendering attacks less effective. Primarily\nspread through email with Office attachments, ransomware infections registered\na drop of 20% in 2018, the first time it plummeted since 2013. Despite this,\nhowever, enterprises should not be easy-going as enterprise infections rose by\n12% in 2018, demonstrating ransomware\u2019s ongoing threat to organizations. \n\nLike ransomware,\ncryptojacking showed a drop of 52% in its activity between January and December\nlast year as a result of the 90% decline in cryptocurrency values, which\nsignificantly reduced profitability. Cryptojacking however continues to appeal\nto attackers because of the low entry barrier, minimal overhead and the\nanonymity it offers. Symantec blocked 3.5-million cryptojacking activities on\nendpoints in December 2018 alone.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The decline in cryptojacking and ransomware activities due to the decreasing cryptocurrency values and increasing adoption of cloud and mobile computing prompted cybercriminals to employ alternative methods such as formjacking to make money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":34665,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[54,274],"class_list":["post-34667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-security","tag-symantec"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}