Black Friday 2017: time to fire up your charge cards and your PC for some online shopping! On second thought, first review the risks, then check your password hygiene and make sure your security solution is up to date.
Have you ever thought about what is going on in your PC while you’re shopping online? Well, at the center of it all are web browsers, which are among the primary targets for cyberattackers. This is due to the high volume of sensitive data that flows through browsers. This is especially true during the holiday shopping period.
Just as in past decades when cash drawers and bank vaults were targeted for theft, today’s e-shops and online banks have fallen under the scope of cybercriminals. Their “digital-focus” is just an evolutionary step beyond robbing stagecoaches in the Wild West, and banks in the 20th century.
Black Friday – and the holiday shopping season that follows – represents an opportunity for cybercriminals, where time invested yields maximum return on investment. To exploit browser vulnerabilities and capture the holiday plunder, criminals can deploy a number of tools including: code execution exploits in both the browser and browser plug-ins, man in the middle attacks, banking malware, fake Android banking apps and DNS Poisoning.
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