Faced with diminishing returns from ransomware and cryptojacking, cyber criminals are doubling down on alternative methods, such as formjacking, to make money according to Symantec’s annual Internet Security Threat Report.

Symantec's report analyses data from Symantec’s Global Intelligence Network, which records events from 123 million attack sensors worldwide, blocks 142 million threats daily and monitors threat activities in more than 157 countries.

Formjacking attacks are described as simple to implement – essentially virtual ATM skimming – where cyber criminals inject malicious code into retailers’ websites to steal shoppers’ payment card details. On average, more than 4,800 unique websites are compromised with formjacking code every month. Symantec blocked more than 3.7 million formjacking attacks on endpoints in 2018, with nearly a third of all detections occurring during the busiest online shopping period of the year – November and December.

While a number of well-known retailers’ online payment websites, including Ticketmaster and British Airways, were compromised with formjacking code in recent months, Symantec’s research reveals small and medium-size retailers are, by and large, the most widely compromised.

By conservative estimates, cyber criminals may have collected tens of millions of dollars last year, stealing consumers’ financial and personal information through credit card fraud and sales on the dark web. Just 10 credit cards stolen from each compromised website could result in a yield of up to US$2.2M each month, with a single credit card fetching up to US$45 in the underground selling forums. With more than 380,000 credit cards stolen, the British Airways attack alone may have allowed criminals to net more than US$17 million.

“Formjacking represents a serious threat for both businesses and consumers,” said Greg Clark, CEO, Symantec. “Consumers have no way to know if they are visiting an infected online retailer without using a comprehensive security solution, leaving their valuable personal and financial information vulnerable to potentially devastating identity theft. For enterprises, the skyrocketing increase in formjacking reflects the growing risk of supply chain attacks, not to mention the reputational and liability risks businesses face when compromised.”

The Diminishing Returns of Cryptojacking and Ransomware

In recent years, ransomware and cryptojacking, where cyber criminals harness stolen processing power and cloud CPU usage from consumers and enterprises to mine cryptocurrency, were the go-to methods for cyber criminals looking to make easy money. However, 2018 brought drop-offs in activity and diminishing returns, primarily due to declining cryptocurrency values and increasing adoption of cloud and mobile computing, rendering attacks less effective. For the first time since 2013, ransomware infections declined, dropping by 20 percent. Nevertheless, enterprises should not let their guard down – enterprise ransomware infections jumped by 12 percent in 2018, bucking the overall downward trend and demonstrating ransomware’s ongoing threat to organisations. In fact, more than eight in ten ransomware infections impact organisations.

Although cryptojacking activity peaked early last year, cryptojacking activity declined by 52 percent throughout the course of 2018. Even with cryptocurrency values dropping by 90 percent and significantly reducing profitability, cryptojacking nonetheless continues to hold appeal with attackers due to the low barrier of entry, minimal overhead, and anonymity it offers. Symantec blocked 3.5 million cryptojacking events on endpoints in December 2018 alone.

Other findings of the report include:

• A single misconfigured cloud workload or storage instance could cost a company millions of dollars or land it in a compliance nightmare. In the past year alone, more than 70 million records were stolen or leaked from poorly configured S3 buckets.
• Supply chain and living off the land (LotL) attacks are now a mainstay of the modern threat landscape, widely adopted by both cyber criminals and targeted attack groups. In fact, supply chain attacks ballooned by 78 percent in 2018.
• Smart phones could arguably be the greatest spying device ever created – a camera, a listening device and location tracker all in one that is willingly carried and used wherever its owner goes. According to Symantec research, 45 percent of the most popular Android apps and 25 percent of the most popular iOS apps request location tracking, 46 percent of popular Android apps and 24 percent of popular iOS apps request permission to access your device’s camera, and email addresses are shared with 44 percent of the top Android apps and 48 percent of the most popular iOS apps.