COVID-19 ‘Breach Bubble’ Waiting to Pop with internet security

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it harder for banks to trace the source of payment card data stolen from smaller, hacked avg.com/retail   online merchants www.avg.com/activate. On the plus side, months of quarantine have massively decreased demand for avg internet security account information that thieves buy and use to create physical counterfeit credit cards. But fraud experts say recent Install Avg With License Number activation developments suggest both trends are about to change — and likely for the worse.

The economic laws of supply and demand hold just as true in the business world as they do in the cybercrime space. Global lockdowns from COVID-19 have resulted in far fewer fraudsters willing or able to visit retail stores to use their counterfeit cards, and the decreased demand has severely depressed prices in the underground for purloined card data.

That’s according to Gemini Adversory, a New York-based cyber intelligence firm that closely tracks the inventories of dark web stores trafficking avg internet security in stolen payment card data.

Stas Alforov, Gemini’s director of research www.avg.com/activate and development, said that since the beginning of 2020 the company has seen a steep drop in demand for compromised “card present” data — digits stolen from hacked avg.com/retail   brick-and-mortar merchants with the help of malicious software surreptitiously Install Avg With License Number activation installed on point-of-sale (POS) devices.

Alforov said the median price for card-present data has dropped precipitously over the past few months.

“Gemini Advisory has seen over 50 percent decrease avg internet security in demand for compromised card present data since the mandated COVID-19 quarantines in the United States as well as the majority of the world,” he told KrebsOnSecurity.

Meanwhile, the supply of card-present data has remained relatively steady. Gemini’s Latest find — a 10-month-long card breach at dozens of Chicken Express locations throughout Texas and other southern states that the avg.com/retail   fast-food chain first publicly acknowledged today after being contacted by this author — saw an estimated 165,000 cards stolen from eatery locations recently go on sale at one of the dark web’s largest cybercrime bazaars.

“Card present data supply hasn’t wavered much during the COVID-19 period,” Alforov said. “This is likely due to the fact that most of the sold data is still coming from breaches that occurred in 2019 and early 2020.

Naturally, crooks who ply their trade in credit card thievery also have been working from home more throughout the COVID-19 pandemic avg internet security. That means demand for stolen “card-not-present” data — customer payment information extracted from hacked online merchants and typically used www.avg.com/activate to defraud other e-commerce vendors — remains high. And so have prices for card-not-present Install Avg With License Number activation data avg.com/retail  : Gemini found prices for this commodity actually increased slightly over the past few months.

Andrew Barratt is an investigator with Coalfire, the cyber forensics firm hired by Chicken Express to remediate the breach and help the company improve security going forward. Barratt said there’s another curious COVID-19 dynamic going on with e-commerce fraud recently that is making it more difficult for banks and card issuers to trace patterns in stolen card-not-present data back to hacked web merchants — particularly smaller e-commerce shops.

“One of the concerns that has been expressed to me is that we’re getting [fewer] overlapping hotspots,” Barratt said. “For a lot of the smaller, more avg internet security frequently compromised merchants there has been avg.com/retail   a large drop off in transactions. Whilst big e-commerce has generally done okay during the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of more modest sized or specialty online retailers www.avg.com/activate have not had the same access to their supply chain and Install Avg With License Number activation so have had to close or drastically reduce the lines they’re selling.”