We’ve seen plenty of attacks that impersonated a single brand along with a few domains used to ensure victims can be taken to a website that seeks to harvest credentials or steal personal information. But I don’t think an attack of such magnitude as the one identified by security researchers at Internet security monitoring vendor Bolster.
According to Bolster, the 13-month long campaign used over 3000 live domains (and another 3000+ domains that are no longer in use) to impersonate over 100 well-known brands. We’re talking about brands like Nike, Guess, Fossil, Tommy Hilfiger, Skechers, and many more. Some of the domains have even existed long enough to be displayed at the top of natural search results.
And these sites are very well made; so much so that they mimic their legitimate counterparts enough that visitors are completing online shopping visits, providing credit card and other payment details.
The impersonation seen in this widespread attack can just as easily be used to target corporate users with brands utilized by employees; all that’s needed is to put the time and effort into building out a legitimate enough looking impersonated website and create a means to get the right users to visit said site (something most often accomplished through phishing attacks).
This latest impersonation campaign makes the case for ensuring users are vigilant when interacting with the web – something accomplished through continual Security Awareness Training.