Hackers go on Black Friday shopping spree, RSA Security

Ahead of Black Friday, hackers are selling hundreds of thousands of stolen card credentials on the dark web from less than £1, with the average cost of UK card details landing at £9 per account. That’s according to research by RSA Security, which also found that the average fraudulent purchase in the UK last Black Friday was £189.

“With hundreds of thousands of UK card credentials available to buy on the dark web for less than £10, you can bet that cybercriminals and fraudsters will be on their own shopping spree. Major sales events like Black Friday have historically seen a huge number of compromised accounts being sold by hackers, used to make illegitimate purchases and siphon funds from virtual wallets,” says Tim Ayling, EMEA Director of Fraud and Risk Intelligence at RSA Security.

He adds: “In the past there has even been a dialing-down of proactive fraud detection on big shopping days like these. Merchants and card issuers were so insistent on allowing their transactions to flow through, they would often choose to allow more risky transactions to continue. This is slowly changing and anecdotal evidence suggests that both maturity in fraud prevention tools, as well as the scale of the fraud problem, are allowing the financial institutions to become more stringent on these days. However, shoppers must remain vigilant. Fraudsters are opportunists by their very nature, and many will see Black Friday as a golden opportunity, hiding amongst the spike in legitimate purchases.”