Every month, thousands of retail websites fall victim to cybercriminals who place malicious code on the sites , stealing customers' credit card information . This hacking technique is called formjacking and is similar to the devices placed in ATMs to steal card numbers.
According to Symantec's annual Internet Security Threat , an average of 4,800 websites per month fall victim to formjacking, which has emerged as one of criminals' favorite hacking methods.
Small and medium-sized businesses are still the main targets of formjacking, according to Symantec, but in recent months, some big names like British Airways and Ticketmaster have also fallen victim to such attacks. Symantec said it blocked more than 3.7 million formjacking attacks on websites in 2018, with a third of the incidents taking place during the holidays.
“Formjacking is a serious threat both to businesses and to consumers”, said Greg Clark, CEO of Symantec. “Consumers have no way of knowing if they are visiting a compromised retail website without using a comprehensive security solution, leaving their valuable personal and financial data vulnerable to potentially devastating personal data theft”.
Formjacking appears to be a profitable technique for hackers. Symantec estimates that criminals were able to make “tens of millions of dollars” by using stolen card information or selling their numbers on the Dark Web for around $45 each.
Meanwhile, ransomware incidents have declined overall by 20% for the first time since 2013, according to Symantec.
However, it appears that security researchers are winning the battle in cyberspacewhen it comes to cases of cryptojacking, a method where a hacker secretly uses someone else's computing power to mine digital currencies. Symantec said it blocked four times as many cryptojacking attacks in 2018 compared to the previous year, representing a 52% decrease.
Hackers, of course, constantly find new ways to carry out attacks to evade detection. Security experts advise users to use antivirus protection software and to verify that any website where they enter their credit card information is secure.
