Nearly three-quarters (72%) of UK online fraud attacks over the past two quarters came from within the country, bucking a trend for cyber-criminals to focus their efforts on victims in different jurisdictions, according to ThreatMetrix.
The fraud prevention firm’s ThreatMetrix Cybercrime Report Q1 2015 draws on data generated by its Global Trust Intelligence Network, which analyzes over one billion transactions each month across 3000 customers worldwide.
It revealed that from October 2014 to March 2015, fraudsters mainly targeted local victims – and not just in the UK.
Some 81% of fraud incidents in Germany came from within the country during the same period, while the figure rose to 85% in Russia, 87% in France and a staggering 94% in Italy.
Traditionally, cyber-criminals have taken advantage of the transnational nature of the internet to launch attacks from foreign jurisdictions where they are safe from investigating law enforcers.
However, according to EMEA research and comms director, Tony Larks, that pattern might be changing due to the large volume of e-commerce fraud.
“About 40% of the fraudulent transactions are from e-commerce companies and as such fraudsters want to receive the items they’ve purchased,” he told Infosecurity.
Transactions made from abroad can sometimes raise suspicion of fraud amongst these providers.
In order to hide the fact they might be located closer to home than at first thought, the fraudsters are increasingly using VPNs and proxy servers to trick first generation fraud prevention tools, ThreatMetrix said.
Device spoofing was called out as the top attack vector, accounting for 6.1% of fraudulent transactions globally.
The report claimed that the vast treasure trove of stolen identities available on underground forums, combined with the proliferation of crimeware tools to cloak traffic is fueling a worrying rise in account log-in fraud, payment fraud and especially account creation fraud.
More than 11.4 million fraud attempts were spotted by ThreatMetrix alone in the peak holiday shopping period of November-December last year.