While e-commerce sites gaming platforms and workplace collaboration tools have seen huge rises in popularity with the rapid digital transformation due to the COVID-19 outbreak. These industries are attracted to fraud attacks. The Q3 fraud survey of Arkose Labs shows the details of the attacks between July and September. To create this report, Arkose Labs assembled 80 fraud and security professionals to get insights into 2020 fraud patterns in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19 scams
At a glance, 2.4 billion attacks have been detected, %85 of these attacks targeted desktops. Europe was the biggest attacking region. Meanwhile, nearly half of the attacks were from Europe. In terms of human-driven fraud attacks, a massive 64% of attacks originate from Europe, with over 10 million attacks from Russia, and 7 million attacks from the United Kingdom.
The 2020 Fraud Survey also shows a new type of cyberattacks, named COVID-19 scams. Fraudsters pretending to be official agencies have engaged in a wide range of scams designed to play on consumer identity, especially around issues such as stimulus checks and small business loans, according to the report. Another cyber attack that has been a significant rise is friendly fraud, as pandemic-related financial hardships blur the line of what is acceptable for many.
Financial services, technology platforms are under threat
In terms of sectors, gaming is one of the industries that has been most impacted by the pandemic. Fraudsters largely deployed bots to attacks on gaming platforms in Q3 2020, with 95% of attacks being automated. 65% of these attacks were on the login, with bad actors looking to takeover legitimate accounts to resell or perform downstream abuse. The intensity of attacks since COVID-19 is due to new entrants coming into the world of fraud
Most of the attacks on the Arkose Labs network for financial services was at the payment stage, as more people embraced digital payments during the pandemic. Technology platforms including cloud-based video platforms, information sharing tools and collaboration platforms have seen also a massive spike in traffic as the number of remote workers has sharp increase.
Compared to online gaming, technology platforms only saw an 8% attack rate despite their newfound popularity. The majority of that was automated, with only 14% of attacks originating from sweatshops.
To sum up, Fraudsters continue to get more sophisticated. They utilize advanced bot technology and humans for intricate attacks. Many are using this increased level of digital traffic. Therefore, fraud teams must be able to use targeted friction to deter malicious activity long term.
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