Black Friday is getting closer and the scammers are rubbing their hands. Better be careful with promotions and free gift cards

As experts from the company emphasize Cisco Talos, this year’s “shopping celebration” will be different than any other. Breakdown of global supply chains, induced by pandemię COVID-19 caused that many desired products are not available or their availability is very limited, as exemplified by the latest PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles.

Cyber ​​criminals take advantage of this situation and they create false “offers” of particularly popular products. After clicking an advertisement or a link from an e-mail message prepared by them, the user unknowingly infects his device with malware, which may lead to the loss of important data (including authentication data such as login and password) and even money.

“Cyber ​​criminals know very well how to get buyers’ attention. If an offer is far more profitable than all the others, and it appears to be ‘too good to be true’, it most likely is. Special attention should be paid to offers with a very short deadline, as cybercriminals hope that we will not rush to check their source thoroughly. On Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday, when promotions only last one day, it is a particularly common procedure

Says Nick Biasini of Cisco Talos.

Black Friday. Watch out for “free” gift cards

Also analysts from the company Fortinet warn against Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday scams. One of the ways used this year by hackers is to use the fake Amazon gift card generator. Thanks to this, they are able to rob their victims of cryptocurrencies or data, including credit card numbers or home addresses.

Legal gift cards are often used to make purchases on Amazon. FortiGuard Labs analysts recently detectedand a malicious file named Amazon Gift Tool.exe. It was found in a ZIP file located on a publicly accessible file repository page. It is not known exactly how this tool was presented to potential victims, but criminals likely advertised it as a free gift card generator.

Of course, a tool that provides free gift cards does not exist. When the victim starts the fake generator, it unpacks and runs a malicious winlogin.exe file, which monitors the victim’s clipboard. The purpose of this software is simple. If a victim tries to add money to their bitcoin wallet by copying and pasting the address, the malware overwrites the victim’s wallet address in the clipboard with its own, with the money going to the attacker.

Black Friday. How to protect yourself from fraud?

Experts from Cisco Talos suggest a few pieces of advice that we can use to protect ourselves from fraudsters:

1) Verify the company that is sending you an email or contacting you via social media. Pay particular attention to:

• Messages on financial matters, e.g. overdue payments.
• Social media posts that advertise “too good to be true” offers.

2) Be vigilant in situations where you receive a message that the sender asks you to do something quickly. Fraudsters create a sense of urgency to get you to act impulsively, recklessly.

3) Do not click on or reply to links from unsolicited e-mails from an untrustworthy source. Enter the page manually into the search bar.

4) Make purchases from the official website of the seller. Don’t click on the ads. When shopping, do not use public or unknown Wi-Fi networks.

5) Avoid filling out forms in e-mails asking for personal information.

6) Use proven tools increasing the level of security: password manager or multi-factor authentication, eg Cisco Duo.

7) Use only trusted payment tools such as Google Pay, Samsung Pay or Apple Pay.

8) When shopping with the app, make sure you download it from a trusted source, preferably official stores such as Google Play or the iOS App Store. Pay attention to suspicious inquiries from the application, e.g. regarding access to text messages, passwords or settings.