Ike.ninja

Netcraft has seen a large increase in survey scams impersonating well-known banks as a lure. These are often run under the guise of a prize in celebration of the bank’s anniversary, though in some cases a reward is promised just for participating.

These scams first came to Netcraft’s attention around 16 months ago, when businesses that were particularly useful during lockdown such as supermarkets, mobile phone networks, and delivery companies were targeted. The expansion of these attacks to use banks as a lure started in October 2021. To date we have seen over 75 distinct banks used as lures for these survey scams, with a global spread including banks from US, UK, Asia, and the Middle East.

Netcraft has to date identified nearly 10,000 websites used in the distribution of the FluBot family of Android malware. As detailed in our previous articles on FluBot, these sites are unwittingly hosting a PHP script that acts as a proxy to a further backend server, allowing otherwise legitimate sites to deliver Android malware to victims. When visited by the intended victim, a “lure” is displayed that implores them to download and install the FluBot malware.

The most common lure themes are parcel delivery and voicemail messages, where the user is told to install the malicious app to track a parcel or listen to a voicemail message. One particularly interesting lure took advantage of FluBot’s infamy, by offering a fake “Android security update” that claimed to protect against the malware family. Users installing this “security update” would instead be infected with FluBot.

Most sites distributing FluBot malware also host legitimate content, suggesting they were compromised by the operators of this malware distribution network, without the knowledge of the site operator. While the use of unrelated domains makes the lures less convincing, as compared to domains specifically registered for fraud, it allows the malware distribution network to operate at a much larger scale.

These affected sites all have one factor in common: they run self-hosted WordPress instances. Netcraft believes the operators of this malware distribution network are actively exploiting well-known vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins and themes to upload malicious content onto insecure sites, joining a growing list of threat actors doing the same.

The Netcraft Browser Extension now
offers credential leak detection for extra protection against
shopping site skimmers.

With brick-and-mortar shops around the world closed due to COVID-19, consumers turned to online businesses to fulfil their shopping needs. According to Adobe’s Digital Economy Index report, US online spending in June was $73 billion, up 76% from $42 billion last year. Even with restrictions lifted, research commissioned by Visa suggests that 74% of Britons who shopped online more often during the lockdown will continue to do so.

Now more than ever it is important to protect against JavaScript skimmers. These are snippets of malicious code which criminals upload to compromised shops. Unbeknownst to the store owner or the user, they transmit entered card details directly to the criminal. Unlike scams such as phishing, which can often be avoided by a vigilant internet user, skimmers are invisible to the human eye without a tool such as the Netcraft Extension to expose them.

Netcraft currently blocks over 6,000 shopping sites which contain skimmers, and even large companies such as British Airways, Ticketmaster and Puma have fallen prey to these attacks in the past.

When you visit a shopping site, the Netcraft extension will
evaluate all requests made by the web page. If a request is found to
be sending credentials to a different domain, the extension
will block the request to prevent your data from being stolen. A block
screen will notify you about the request and provide
information about the malicious behaviour that was detected. Only
card number leaks are currently blocked, but other types of
credentials may be enabled in future updates.

For example, if you check out using your credit card on
exampleshoppingsite.com but your card details are sent to
examplebadsite.com, the extension will block the request. This
checking is done locally and securely in your browser – no sensitive
information is sent to Netcraft.

The extension will also block pages which make requests to
malicious domains that are part of JavaScript attacks.

In addition to shopping site skimmers, the Netcraft Extension also protects against other malicious JavaScript, phishing and fake shops, including those related to coronavirus. The extension is available for Chrome, Firefox, Opera and the new Microsoft Edge based on Chromium.

If you already have the Netcraft Extension installed, your browser
will update it automatically.

The current coronavirus pandemic has resulted in the closure of many pubs, restaurants, and brick-and-mortar retail stores. Many purchases that would previously have been made in person now take place online. In research commissioned by Visa
, 89% of Britons have shopped online since the UK’s lockdown restrictions began, with 31% buying items online for the first time during this period. This increase in online shopping activity benefits criminal groups in that: smaller businesses newly reliant on online transactions provide attackers with a stream of inadequately-defended shopping sites to exploit, and buyers are far more likely to be driven to these compromised shops or to fake shops compared to before the pandemic.

JavaScript skimmers run on compromised shopping sites. When shoppers enter their payment details, the skimmer secretly sends a copy to the attacker – potentially even if the customer does not complete the transaction. Even the most careful of users can be victims of these attacks, as they appear on compromised but otherwise well-intentioned shops with no visual indication of their presence.

Fake shops are another threat. Shoppers seeking bargains may unknowingly find themselves on a fake shop which claims to offers the products they want at a highly discounted price, but the victim will subsequently only receive counterfeit goods, no goods at all, or have the transaction aborted after entering credentials which is equivalent to a phishing attack.

Fake shops also take advantage of the pandemic by offering goods in high demand due to coronavirus, such as N95 masks. The FBI has released a Public Service Announcement about an increase in online shopping scams involving the sale of counterfeit healthcare products such as Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). To date, Netcraft has blocked over a thousand such coronavirus-themed fake shops, 80,000 other fake shops selling all sorts of counterfeit goods, and around 3,500 compromised shops hosting JavaScript skimmers.

The Netcraft browser extension and mobile apps provide protection against fake shops as well as legitimate shopping sites that have been compromised with JavaScript skimmers. When an extension or app user visits one of these dangerous shops, Netcraft will block access to the shop and alert them: