Dubai, UAE, 27 November 2017: 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. (Get some quick tips here)
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.
To maintain vital trust relationships with
customers, some retailers have responded to these potential attacks by building
up cyber-defenses. However, losses of data and revenue are likely to continue
to plague online shopping, and in parallel, the security of back offices for
brick-and-mortar shops. As a result, retailers and consumers have adopted
technologies that include SSL certificates, two-factor authentication, data
encryption and equally important but often overlooked – education for
employees. Other retailers (though in smaller numbers) have even become early
adopters of cryptocurrencies for retail transactions.
Are Cryptocurrencies the future?
While the number of
transactions using cryptocurrencies may seem trivial, on the surface they do
offer improvements in security over traditional online shopping, enabling a
significant reduction in risk to sensitive information transferred during
transactions with retailers who often collect considerable amounts of customer
data.
However, there is a flip
side. Reliably buying and using cryptocurrencies is still challenging for less
technically astute users and doing so despite the risks, could expose them to
further threats. Looking a little deeper, the majority of users probably never
consider acquiring bitcoin until they face having to pay for ransomware
encryption keys. And while cryptocurrencies like bitcoin could pave the way for
considerably improved security, their adoption remains tightly bound to illicit
activities.
There have long been cases of cryptocurrencies being mined
secretly and thus illegally, via browsers to access the CPU capacity of users’
machines. This trend has not only grown among full-time cyber criminals:
nowadays even popular (and legal) websites like Politifact.com and
Showtime have been discovered cryptojacking users’ CPU capacity. Regardless of these
difficulties, cryptocurrencies and associated technologies are unlikely to
disappear from the commerce landscape.
For more information on how Crypto currencies operate please checkout this link: https://kingpassive.com/ mining-cryptocurrency/
For more information on how Crypto currencies operate please checkout this link: https://kingpassive.com/