53% of authentication attempts on social networking sites are fraudulent and 25% of new applications on the same sites are fake.
This is evidenced from a study by Arkose Labs.Arkose Labs researchers analyzed more than 1.2 billion transactions in financial services, e-commerce, travel, social networks, games and entertainment, highlighting the main trends.
According to experts, they studied various kinds of attacks, some of which were carried out by bots, and the other part by cybercriminals. They observed hacking accounts, creation of fraudulent accounts, spam and other malicious activity.
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The report says that every tenth transaction is potentially malicious, it may be anything from automatic bots to attackers.
“We are in an era where online identity, intent, business, metrics and content can all be faked. This can have serious security and financial repercussions for any business with an online presence, especially as they try to balance risk management with the delivery of exceptional customer experience”, – said Kevin Gosschalk, CEO of Arkose Labs.
Researchers found that 75% of attacks on social media sites make bots in automatic mode. The most popular malicious activity is called account hacking – attackers try to get to the personal data of respectable users.
“A large percentage of attacks on user accounts in social networks is explained by the value of personal data, to which attackers will gain access in case of successful compromise. Since more than 50% of authentication attempts belong to fraudsters, we can conclude that attackers use automated bots to launch attacks”, – explains the results of Kevin Gosschalk.
Report of Arkose Labs sheds profound light on the connected nature of the fraud ecosystem, illustrating how fraudsters deploy different calculated strategies, based on industry and business models, to maximize each attack’s ROI.
Right now, fraudsters are actively preparing to launch large-scale attacks on retail vendors during the holidays by validating and testing stolen gift cards and identities compromised in recent breaches.
According to Arkose Labs, the long-term solution to this problem is not rooted in applying new defenses — because fraud will continue to evolve — but rather to break the economics of the attack and eliminate a fraudster’s financial incentive.
