With the upcoming online shopping event Cyber Monday approaching in a few days, the potential for Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS) and other issues of hacktivism and cyber-crime are likely to emerge and become more prominent. Although at this time, no direct threats to industries or other institutions have been identified, the fact that online activity has historically increased drastically in the US on this day compared to other days during the year means that various attacks will render more significant impacts on victim institutions and will affect a greater number of consumers than other such incidents.
RSA researchers estimate that cyber-attacks that occur on Cyber Monday cost companies in the US and the UK more than $3 million per hour. These attacks include acts of fraud, such as sending phishing e-mails to customers, as well as service disruptions and network outages to service providers and retail corporations.
Proofpoint estimates that, based on previous years malicious activity, the most common companies to be featured in phishing emails are as follows:
•Walmart
•FedEx
•UPS
•DHL
•Amazon
•eBay
•Target
•Toys R Us
The most common threats to consumers during this time appear to be credential-harvesting, or accessing and gathering stolen credentials from victims that could include login information for financial accounts as well as others, as well as botnet recruitment, by infecting a user's computer via a malicious URL featured in a phishing email.
Anonymous-affiliated Twitter accounts, such as @YourAnonNews, are calling for physical disruptions of Black Friday shopping; while there is not a direct connection between these proposed disruptions and a possible cyber-attack during Cyber Monday, if these physical protests or disruptions occur and are deemed in any way successful, it could lead to follow-up efforts over the weekend in an attempt to likewise disrupt the large amount of online-shopping.
via Examiner National Edition Gadgets & Tech Channel Articles http://www.examiner.com/article/cyber-monday-awareness?cid=roadrunner