*Cybersecurity experts say as several consumers are stocking from Amazon to avoid the hassle of last-minute shopping before the holidays, malicious hackers are also exploiting the trend to spoof purchase notifications to steal financial information

Gbenga Kayode | 绿帽献妻

Scammers use Amazon’s name to lure victims into their traps. With the holiday season upon us, it only gets more intense, a report has said.

It was gathered that several consumers are stocking from Amazon to avoid the hassle of last-minute shopping before the holidays.

However, malicious hackers are using this trend to spoof purchase notifications to steal financial information in the process, CyberNews report stated.

This attack, report noted, works by implementing legitimate Amazon links, forcing the end-user to call instead to cancel any order.

Starting October 2021, Avanan, a CheckPoint company, has observed a new attack in which the attacker spoofs a typical Amazon order confirmation.

Malicious e-mail is designed to get the end-user to place a phone call and give up credit card information.

It starts as what looks like a traditional Amazon order confirmation. Given the high price, a user is likely to check their account, report said.

Accordingly, when they click on the links, it goes directly to the actual Amazon site, which cybersecurity researchers explain, means that even the most trained user will click on it. Nevertheless, the actual e-mail address should set off alarm bells as it comes from a Gmail address.

The number listed on the e-mail is not an Amazon number. Though it has an area code from South Carolina, the attackers call back from India.

Avanan researchers said: 鈥淲hen you call the number, at first, no one will answer. After a few hours, a call back will occur.

鈥淭he person on the other line will say that to cancel the invoice, they will need a credit card number and CVV number,鈥� report noted.

Researchers further claimed: “This attack bypasses traditional email security scanners in large part due to the existence of legit links.

鈥淲hen doing a check against an Allow List, this e-mail passes. When we crunched the numbers for our 1H 2021 Cyber Attack Report, we found that 8.14% of phishing emails ended up in the user’s inbox simply because of an allow or block list misconfiguration.

鈥淭his is an increase of 5.3% from the 2019 Global Phish Report. The problem gets worse depending on the security solution in use.

鈥淲hen sitting behind an SEG, we found that 15.4% of email attacks are on an Allow List.鈥�

Scammers 聽in love with Amazon, says regulator

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) disclosed the number of reported Amazon impersonators grew five times from July 2020 to June 2021.

It was learnt that out of 96,000 reported business impersonators, 35% used Amazon’s name to lure victims into their traps.

Apple is the second most impersonated company, with 6% of reported scammers pretending to be company representatives.

鈥淩ecently, I’ve received a similar email from scammers, too. It was a purchase confirmation email – apparently, I bought a ridiculously overpriced PS4 for… $1098. 鈥淭here was no link – malicious or legitimate – in the email.

鈥淗owever, there was a phone number that I was supposed to call to cancel the order I had supposedly made,鈥� report quoted a consumer as saying.

According to Dave Hatter, a cybersecurity expert at IntrustIT, for advice on spotting the scam, the following are measures you should consider:

1. Stop. Think. Did I actually order the item in question?
2. Look for misspellings and bad grammar in the email as red flags. As the scammers get better, this is less common.
3. Mouseover, BUT DO NOT CLICK on the links to see if they actually go to the website the email appears to have come from. If it’s not VERY CLEAR that it does, DO NOT CLICK the link.
4. Be extra vigilant and skeptical.
5. If you’re not sure, or you did order something, go “out-of-band.”
6. Don’t click any of the links or call any of the phone numbers (all easily spoofed).
7. Go to the website that purportedly sent the email by visiting it directly. For example, open a new browser window and go to www.amazon.com, www.target.com, www.walmart.com.
8. Login in to your account and use the legitimate site to check on any orders you might have.
9. The same would hold true if the email purportedly came from a shipping company like UPS or FedEx. Go “out-of-band” and visit their site directly to search for the shipping number.

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