This Black Friday scam is preying on PS5 hunters
Be wary of too-good-to-be-true PS5 deals
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Scammers have already started luringBlack Fridayshoppers with scams involvinggaming consolessuch asPlayStation 5, and fakeAmazongift card generators that stealcryptocurrency.
Still a few weeks away, Black Friday is one the biggest shopping bonanzas, and as perAdobe Analyticssaw sales of $9.03 billion last year, with 2021 expected to top that figure.
Given its popularity, Black Friday is also one of the favorite targets exploited by scammers to trick consumers.
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“While online shopping towards Black Friday is fun and exciting, it also provides cyber criminals with ample opportunities to exploit and monetize a victim’s giving spirit and greed,” notecybersecuritysleuths atFortinetwhile sharing a couple of scams that have already cropped up on their radar.
Too good to be true
Fortinet recently discovered a malicious executable, which they believe is pitched as a free Amazon gift card generator.
The file however placed a clipboard monitoringmalwarethat keeps its eyes peeled forbitcoin walletaddresses that the victim has copied into the clipboard. It then replaces the wallet’s address with its own, hoping that the victim will not notice the altered wallet address when the victim pastes it during the transaction.
“Free generator of this sort has been around and scammed people for years. But given the market power of Amazon, this new scam is especially enticing,” note the researchers.
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The other scam plays on the chip shortage induced difficulty in procuring new gaming consoles such as thePlayStation 5andXbox Series Sand X consoles.
While the researchers couldn’t analyze the website for the scam, they share that scams such as these usually trick the user into visiting a cleverly disguisedphishingpage that gets them to share confidential information such as their credentials for online shopping sites, credit card numbers, home address, and more.
“Although these scams are not new, users should pay extra attention to the potential scams ahead of the Black Friday shopping spree…. If a discount or availability of a hard to find item seem too good to be true, think twice before making a purchase,” the researchers conclude.
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With almost two decades of writing and reporting on Linux, Mayank Sharma would like everyone to think he’sTechRadar Pro’sexpert on the topic. Of course, he’s just as interested in other computing topics, particularly cybersecurity, cloud, containers, and coding.
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