Phishers Target Hungry Thanksgiving Shoppers

I could begin with a proud 'I told you so!' since I predicted this but I believe everybody knew that Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday will represent the perfect moment for hackers to launch their attacks. Barracuda Networks, a company focused on email and web security, reported an impressive rise when it comes to phishing websites and emails sent by the attackers. According to the firm, the malicious persons created up to 10 times more phishing pages and they sent three times more emails to potential victims in the last 24 hours. And this is pretty obvious as millions of Internet consumers are going online for shopping. Most attackers attempt to create copies of famous shopping pages and attempt to trick users to reveal their sensitive details.

"Consumers need to be extra vigilant when shopping online this weekend," said Dean Drako, president and CEO of Barracuda Networks. "Anyone planning to do holiday shopping online this weekend should go directly to the sites that they plan to purchase from, rather than click on URLs that arrive via emails."

Just like usual, the phishers assault consumers with millions of email messages, most of them promoting products and special offers that could be received only if they clicked on the URL attached. Obviously, the users were redirected to malicious pages, similar to famous ones, requesting users' credentials. Some naive customers could be tricked and once they entered the credit card information, they could lose all their money in a matter of seconds.

"We typically see an increase in phishing activity before a regular two-day weekend, but the volume of phishing sites and corresponding email in just this past 24 hours is quite astounding. We expect this blitz to continue over the next few days," the Barracuda Networks official continued.