14 DAY TRIAL // A recent report from ThreatMatrix shows a 20% spike in cybercrime compared to the first quarter of 2015, with UK businesses in the sight of most of these attacks.
Gathering data from the ThreatMetrix Digital Identity Network, which analyzed information from more than three billion online transactions, the report summarizes attacks recorded between April and June 2015.
These attacks took the form of fraudulent online payments, unauthorized logins, and new account registrations, and the ThreatMatrix team recorded 75 million of this kind of attacks.
According to the collected data, 36 out of the 75 million recorded attacks took place in online e-commerce, rising 20% than the previous quarter.
ThreatMatrix estimated that these attacks could have caused damages of up to £2 billion ($3.1 billion / €2.72 billion) if allowed to be processed by the stores in question.
While most attacks took place in e-commerce, ThreatMatrix also saw a rise in attacks against online lenders, whereas the media industry saw a decline compared to Q1, after previously seeing a spike in attacks.
The UK, the most defrauded country on Earth
UK businesses, in general, were the target of most fraudulent payments, seeing 50% more traffic than their US counterparts.
As for the sources of these attacks, ThreatMatrix still has the US ranked at number one, closely followed by the UK and Germany, and India and the Dominican Republic completing the top 5, both new entries on the list.
In most of these attacks, the primary medium of operation were bots and data exfiltrated from data breaches, which only comes to show the dangers of not protecting customer info by proper security protocols.
The most recent data breaches recorded include Lloyds Bank, Mohu, and Excellus BCBS, so expect instances where fraudulent purchases will be initiated with the data of these customers. Currently, at least one case from the Mohu breach was recorded where a cyber-criminal went on a spending spree with one of the Mohu customers' credit card.
If you'd like to read the entire ThreatMatrix report, a PDF document is available for download.
