Cryptocurrency marketplaces under attack, ThreatMetrix Q4 2017 report reveals

The world of cryptocurrency has become a prime target for attacks on legitimate transactions, with fraudulent new accounts being created using stolen or synthesised identities to set up mule accounts to launder money. Additionally, legitimate accounts are being hacked to make fraudulent payments and transfer cryptocurrency balances out when at their highest value.

The report also found an increased volume of attacks originating from Russia, using both automated bots and location spoofing tools. In fact, for the very first time, Russia emerged as a top attack originator, with the majority of incidents targeting ecommerce retailers in the US. Key shopping days in Q4 over the holiday season saw up to 2 million bot attacks coming from Russia alone. These persistent, but increasingly sophisticated, attacks were primarily targeting top American retailers.

The number of attacks on ecommerce during the fourth quarter of 2017 was 113% of the volume of attacks across all industries in the previous quarter, underscoring the pressure retailers are under during this period. Almost 193 million transactions were rejected as fraudulent, representing a 173% increase over 2016.

The quarter also saw heavy bot activity from across the globe with more than 34 million attacks during the peak holiday shopping period. In addition to these 34 million attacks, ThreatMetrix recorded about 800 million bot attacks throughout the quarter, ranging from simple account validation attacks to sophisticated bots attempting to masquerade as legitimate customer traffic.

The Q4 2017 Cybercrime Report is based upon actual cybercrime attacks, detected and blocked during real-time analysis and interdiction of fraudulent online payments, logins and new account applications on the ThreatMetrix Digital Identity Network between October and December 2017. For more information about ThreatMetrix, please check out a detailed profile in our web fraud & e-identity company database.