Although it’s already been over a month since Black Friday and Cyber Monday, their effects can still be felt online. Unfortunately, it’s not about promotions, discounts, or other positive marketing activities, but rather a series of threats related to online security.

The Aliexpress-related scandal

One of the most striking symptoms of the aforementioned threats was the emergence of numerous clones of the Aliexpress website, designed to steal its users’ personal data. The immense popularity of this Chinese e-commerce giant unfortunately translated into a high number of those clones. According to data presented by the website innpoland.pl, there were just over 400 such clones, placing Aliexpress among the most frequently “copied” domains in the history of the Internet. Naturally, over time, the harmfulness of this attack began to decline, but this was primarily due to a widespread campaign by security industry circles rather than increased public awareness.

Phishing – yesterday, today, and tomorrow

Of course, an attack structured this way was not the first in the history of online commerce. A year earlier (also at the end of the year), a similar attack took place, with the difference that it targeted only the South American, Australian, and Chinese markets. As can be seen, there was a lack of something akin to a global security strategy that could have warned unsuspecting Internet users in Europe and North America in time.

It’s not all about Ali for hackers

The end of the year is a period in which phishing attacks naturally increase in number. Unfortunately, similar threats appear online all year round, and their sheer volume is hard to grasp. According to data presented by Kaspersky Lab (in the “Beyond Black Friday Threat Report”), in 2017, there were as many as 770,000 detected threats in which unsuspecting users were urged to share their most important personal data. Interestingly, almost half of these attacks involved the financial sector—websites of financial institutions with a broad range of operations.

Where does phishing come from?

The widespread popularity of this method of data theft has at least two causes. The first is the ease of constructing such an attack, which does not require very advanced hacking skills. All it takes is copying a website and modifying it to trick potential customers into disclosing crucial information. These days, the effectiveness of such attacks is even higher, partly due to cybercriminals using simple SSL protections. And although SSL certificates are continuously updated and improved, for most internet users it unfortunately makes little difference what type of validation a given certificate has.

The second, far more dangerous reason for the high number of phishing attacks is the gullibility of internet users. A professionally designed website almost always convinces them of the site owner’s honest intentions. Many people still forget that verifying a specific store should be done in multiple steps—for example, by analyzing the address and security certificates, searching for reviews from other users, or checking the available payment methods and, if needed, contacting the seller by phone.

Summary

Even the best security system and the most advanced SSL certificate cannot replace common sense. Someone once said that, in a cybersecurity system, the weakest link is still the human element. It’s interesting how often this thesis will have to be proven true in real life.