Global eCommerce merchants targeting consumers outside their country of origin

Technology is changing everything and the rate at which it is changing is accelerating. A recent report says that the biggest threat in financial services comes from device spoofing, as fraudsters attempt to trick banks into thinking multiple fraudulent login attempts are coming from new customer devices, perhaps by repeatedly wiping cookies or using virtual machines. Online transactions have democratized eCommerce, reducing the emphasis on physical stores, company locations and a local consumer base. As a result, global eCommerce merchants are increasingly targeting consumers outside their country of origin, capitalizing on an ever-more transient consumer population that is looking to access the best products and services, regardless of location. This is facilitated by the provision of low-cost international shipping options and simple international payment options.


This is, however putting pressure on the smaller players who have not kept pace with evolving consumer behavior, leaving the market dominated by those businesses that have prioritized global expansion and a truly frictionless buying experience. In the ThreatMetrix Network, 54% of all eCommerce transactions are now cross-border, much higher than in other industries and emphasizing the ever-more global footprint of larger eCommerce players.


Another survey found that online consumers continue to worry about their information being stolen or used improperly. Some 22% of consumers distrust the internet so much that they never shop online. Now, the soft target of the hackers are the Financial services payments transactions that continue to be the most vulnerable. As cross-border transactions continue to be a core feature of Network traffic, eCommerce merchants must prioritize a global, dynamic approach to verify transactions. Attacks on mobile financial services transactions are growing at a faster rate than the overall attack levels. Across all transactions the attack rate grew 18% compared to last quarter, but the mobile attack rate grew 33% during the same period, indicating a potential further shift to mobile financial services attacks.


Global, automated bot traffic continues to grow with a strong propensity to target large retailers worldwide in an attempt to infiltrate good user accounts and access sensitive personal data and saved credit cards. The Network has detected bot attacks over the past three years that, during their peak attack periods, have accounted for up to 90% of an organization’s transaction volume.


This clearly has a huge impact on business as usual, affecting order processing times and the ability to effectively identify good returning customers. These bots are mainly attempting to takeover good user accounts, slicing down lists of stolen identity data until they get a hit, often adjusting their rate controls to a “low-and-slow” attack speed to mimic legitimate customer traffic. This quarter, bot traffic was predominantly originating from Vietnam, Indonesia, US, Russia, Malaysia, South Korea, India, Brazil, Japan, and Thailand - an ever more dispersed list of countries that includes a number of growth and emerging economies.

 
The Network is currently detecting numerous instances of a distributed botnet, coming from multiple global locations, attempting to log in to trusted eCommerce customer accounts. At times, these attempts are interspersed by some successful logins from legitimate customers. When the botnet achieves a successful attempted login with stolen credentials, the fraudster then takes over from the bot and intervenes. After waiting for a couple of weeks, the fraudster logs in to the compromised account, changes the account credentials and places a fraudulent order. The legitimate customer is often unaware that their account is compromised, perhaps until they see an unknown charge appear on their credit card or account.