Cyber criminals targeting Amazon Prime Day shoppers

The E-commerce giant Amazon has announced the Amazon Prime Day sale in India. Amazon Prime Day is one such seasonal event scheduled for July 12 and 13, in which the retail giant kicks off a series of tempting sales for consumers looking to save money. But Cybercriminals like to exploit seasonal activities and events, especially those that attract public attention.

Check Point Research has alerted the shopaholic persons for the forthcoming Amazon Prime Day offers. There are increasing phishing emails and suspicious domains designed to scam prospective shoppers. Shoppers aren’t the only ones warming up in the sidelines, it seems that threat actors and hackers are already on the field, spreading malicious content and gearing up to leverage their own “special deals” on these online days.

Check Point said it has seen a 37% jump in Amazon-related phishing attacks at the start of July compared with the daily average for June. Further, almost 1,900 new domains using the term “Amazon” popped up in June, with almost 10% of them found to be either malicious or suspicious.

Sources say, Cybercriminals may not use the term “Amazon” in their domain registration to avoid detection. Moreover, these scammers might save these domains for future use and do not want them to appear on anyone’s radar. As in previous years, scammers have already targeted Prime buyers in an attempt to deploy malware or steal sensitive information.

A report released by cyber threat intelligence provider Check Point Research looks at the types of threats Prime buyer's face and offers advice on how to avoid them. Among the phishing emails already detected by Check Point, one claims to be for an Amazon order that was cancelled due to payment issues.

The message pretends to be from Amazon Customer Support with a subject line of “Order Cancelled Unpaid INV.” But any recipient who clicks on the attached file will find their computer infected with dropper malware. It is time for Protecting yourself from Amazon Prime Day phishing scams.

The experts say, Phishing emails use certain key psychological tactics to try to convince unsuspecting users to take the bait. Such emails often create a sense of urgency to prevent the recipient from thinking too much about whether the message is legitimate or not.

Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA