Holiday Cyber-Effects

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Generous gifts, free vacation tickets, promotions, bonuses and an offer to earn mountains of money on the upcoming holidays - all this is cheese in a mousetrap that scammers have prepared for Russians for the New Year holidays. How not to fall for their trick and why leaks of personal data become the basis for attacks - in the material RSpectr.

A MILLION TRICKS

According to preliminary estimates, in 2022, Russian organizations lost 160 billion rubles due to online fraud, and individuals - about 1 billion rubles, Smart-Soft executive content writing service director Sergey Chernomashentsev told RSpectr. According to him, these amounts include losses from data theft and fraudulent activities.

At the same time, experts interviewed by RSpectr noted that




Cybercriminals are trying to take advantage of the pre-New Year rush, and they are especially active in the last week of December

Evgeny Egorov, leading analyst at Group-IB's Digital Risk Protection department, told RSpectr that

Fraudulent websites with fake jewelry giveaways have already appeared on the Internet

The victim allegedly wins a gold chain worth almost 250 thousand rubles, but the "organizers" say they cannot deliver the prize and offer to pay the full value in cash. The participant is only required to transfer a fee of 521 rubles.

As a result, the fraudsters receive money from the victim for the "fee" and their card details. According to Group-IB, the amount of losses could already reach 150 thousand rubles.

In some scenarios, attackers can steal all funds from the victim's card and even take out a loan in the victim's name.

VTB's press service warned that Russians may be offered holiday conditions for paying for goods and services, and the opportunity to "save" their savings in a "safe account" with a partner bank. The bank drew RSpectr's attention to the fact that

The most popular topics in terms of phishing are promotions and discounts, ticket sales for New Year's events, and booking tourist trips

During the New Year period, one of the most vulnerable categories suffers – people with low incomes, noted Sergey Chernomashentsev. They want to earn money, and scammers come to “help” with this, offering “work” that requires paying money. After the money is transferred, the criminal disappears.

According to the expert,

A fairly new method of fraud is clickjacking

Sergey Chernomashentsev, Smart-Soft:

– In this case, the attackers use scripts to overlay transparent buttons on forms on the official website. While there, the user enters their login and password, for example, for an online bank, and this data immediately goes to the scammers. They, in turn, sell them on forums on the darknet.

Kaspersky Lab content analyst Olga Svistunova noted in a conversation with RSpectr that users are often lured with generous prizes and cash payments. However, at one stage, in order to receive a gift or withdraw the funds owed, a person will be asked to pay a "commission" that will go to the cybercriminals.

According to Valery Stepanov, Head of the Information Security Competence Center at T1 Integration,

Despite the many schemes used by scammers, you shouldn't expect any fundamentally new methods of fraud before the holidays

However, he emphasized in a conversation with RSpectr, it is important to understand that attackers are very good at adapting existing scenarios to the current reality.