Thailand
Thailand: Formjacking the latest menace as old threats fade
Formjacking, essentially virtual ATM skimming, is the new get-rich-quick scheme for cybercriminals in response to last year’s diminishing returns from other cybercrimes like ransomware and cryptojacking.
These hackers are injecting malicious code into retailers’ websites to steal payment information from customers.
More than 4,800 unique websites are compromised with formjacking code each month, according to Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR) Volume 24.
In 2018, Thailand was ranked the seventh most at-risk country in Asia-Pacific for cyberthreats, the same as in 2017.
But cyberthreats in Thailand grew last year, causing its global internet security threat profile to change regarding malware, phishing hosts, bots, ransomware and cryptominers.
Greg Clark, chief executive of Symantec, said cybercriminals may have made tens of millions of dollars last year, a conservative estimate, from stealing consumers’ financial and personal information through credit card fraud and information sales on the dark web.
Just 10 credit cards stolen from each compromised website could result in a yield of up to US$2.2 million each month, with a single credit card fetching up to $45 on underground data-selling forums. With more than 380,000 credit cards stolen in the British Airways attack alone, criminals could have netted about copy7 million.
While a number of well-known websites that accept online payments, including Ticketmaster and British Airways, were compromised with formjacking code in recent months, Symantec’s research reveals that small and medium-sized retailers are often targeted the most.
“Consumers have no way to know if they are visiting an infected online retailer without using a comprehensive security solution, leaving their valuable personal and financial information vulnerable to potentially devastating identity theft,” Mr Clark said.
He said the skyrocketing increase in formjacking reflects the growing risk of supply chain attacks, not to mention the reputational and liability risks businesses face when compromised.
Last year Symantec blocked more than 3.7 million formjacking attacks on endpoints, with nearly a third of all detections occurring during the busiest online shopping period of the year, in November and December.
Sherif El-Nabawi, vice-president for sales engineering in Asia-Pacific and Japan at Symantec, said the overall number of web attacks in 2018 was up 56% from 2017 and one in 10 URLs analysed by Symantec were identified as malicious in 2018.
Enterprise ransomware infections rose 12% in 2018, while consumer ransomware infections were down from 41% in 2017 to just 19% in 2018. That meant overall ransomware infections in 2018 were down 20% as attackers moved to more lucrative activities.
Source: https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/news/1648940/formjacking-the-latest-menace-as-old-threats-fade