Holiday season is cybercrime season, Arkose Labs warns

Recent data from Arkose Labs, the fraud deterrence platform, predicts a 60% increase in online fraud attempts over the upcoming 2021 holiday shopping season.

The Q4 Arkose Labs Fraud and Abuse Report provided data on the latest fraud trends, which not only included an increase in threats during the holidays, but also a rising number of attacks by bots, and a resurgence in attacks on travel companies.

Analysed by the Arkose Labs Fraud Deterrence Prevention Platform from July to September 2021, the report is based on actual user sessions and attack patterns.

The report revealed that attacks have steadily increased over 2020, becoming more frequent, launching on a larger scale, and increasing in sophistication. Arkose Labs estimates that eight million attacks will occur daily during the 2021 holiday shopping season.

Turning its attention to the travel industry, which is now “back in the crosshairs” of cybercrime, the report highlighted that the sector suffered an 80% increase in attacks from the second to the third quarter of 2021.

Asia was reportedly the top originator of fraud attacks, with China driving nearly half of all attacks in Q3. The US, in second place, accounted for 19.4% of attacks.

While human fraud attempted are increasing, machine attacks are predicted to ramp up during the holiday season. Bots now account for 88% of attacks, according to Arkose Labs.

The report also revealed that digital businesses are experiencing a surge of fake new accounts. Arkose Labs detected 560 million malicious attempts on registration flows last quarter, four times more than at the beginning of the year.

As more customers open digital accounts, account takeover attempts fuelled by large-scale credential stuffing soon follow. Arkose Labs said it stopped three billion credential stuffing attacks over the past year, nearly doubling over the past 12 months. In 2020 digital businesses saw 90% higher volume of credential stuffing attacks during the final quarter of the year, over the holiday shopping period.

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