Black Friday, cyber banking attacks doubled on 2021

The number of cyberattacks using banking viruses (Trojans) that steal payment data doubled this Black Friday compared to last year, reaching nearly 20 million.

These are the data disclosed by researchers of the security company Kaspersky.

"Banking trojans - they explain - are tools used by cybercriminals who take advantage of the discount season. When you visit an online store, they save all the data that the user enters in the site's forms, so cybercriminals have access to the number of credit or debit card, the expiration date and the CV, the site login credentials.Once they have this information, they can use it to empty the user's bank account,

After a rapid decline in the number of banking trojan attacks in 2021, cybercriminals have returned to this type of threat with renewed strength, Kaspersky points out.

In 2022, the number of attacks doubled compared to the same period in 2021. From January to November, experts detected and thwarted nearly 20 million attacks, with an overall growth of 92% in the number of detections.

Experts also found numerous examples of phishing pages that for the first time abuse Bnpl (Buy now pay later) services that allow customers to split the cost of the purchase into several interest-free installments;

they are particularly popular, especially among young people, during shopping periods such as Black Friday.

An example of this type of scam is the

misuse of a popular service called Afterpay (Clearpay in the UK and Italy), with 20 million active users worldwide.

"It is important to pay attention to where you buy from, beware of unknown companies and use a reliable security solution," says Olga Svistunova, security expert at Kaspersky.