This Holiday Season, Cyberthreats That May Affect the Retail Sector (and How to Address Them)

Retail companies are preparing for their yearly spike in online (and in-store) traffic as the holidays get near. Regrettably, hackers seeking to take advantage of weaknesses are also drawn to this surge in activity.

The Thales business Imperva just released its yearly cybersecurity guide for holiday shopping. Retailers should be particularly aware of AI-driven risks this year, according to data from the Imperva Threat Research team's six-month review (April 2024–September 2024). Large language models (LLMs) and generative AI tools are becoming more popular and sophisticated, and cybercriminals are using them more and more to expand and improve their attacks on e-commerce platforms.

Additionally, retail websites as a whole encounter 569,884 AI-driven attacks every day on average, according to Imperva Threat Research. Retail enterprises must know what kinds of risks are behind these attacks and how to defend against them to safeguard both their business and their clients throughout the Christmas season.

AI Online Retail Threats Are Led by Business Logic Abuse

The most frequent AI-driven attack on retail websites was found to be business logic misuse, which accounted for 30.7% of all attacks. Business logic abuse happens when hackers take advantage of an application's intended functionality to accomplish illegal goals. To get goods or services at a reduced cost, they can, for instance, take advantage of return procedures or manipulate discount codes. Imperva discovered that almost half of retailers have experienced some form of business logic abuse.

AI's capacity to examine user behavior patterns and spot possible weaknesses increases the threat's hazard. Retailers need to put strict controls in place to keep an eye on and verify user behavior on their platforms as attackers employ AI to create more potent exploitation techniques. Businesses run the danger of suffering significant financial losses and reputational harm in the absence of these safeguards.

DDoS Attacks Continue to Be a Danger

At 30.6% of AI-driven risks to retailers, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults are almost as prevalent as business logic misuse and are only growing in importance. The Imperva 2024 DDoS Threat Landscape study states that during the previous year, application-layer DDoS attacks on retail websites had grown by 61%.

Online merchants are at considerable risk from application-layer DDoS assaults, particularly as they get ready for a spike in traffic during the holiday shopping season. AI can be used by cybercriminals to plan intricate DDoS assaults that overwhelm retail websites and render them unusable.

A successful DDoS assault can have a crippling financial impact on a company, resulting in lost income, higher recovery expenses, and possibly long-term harm to the reputation of the brand. Retailers need to invest in strong DDoS mitigation systems that can detect and stop assaults before they cause operational disruptions to counter this threat.

Grinch Bots Are Still Causing Chaos Bad bots have gotten more complex, frequently using AI algorithms to imitate human behavior and get over security safeguards. Of all AI-driven attacks on retail websites, bad bot attacks accounted for 20.8%. Because these automated threats can conduct credential stuffing attacks, create bogus accounts, and harvest price data, they seriously interrupt regular business operations.

Grinch bots, a sophisticated scalping bot that searches online inventories and buys the most sought-after things of the season with the intention of reselling them at a substantial markup, are a particular concern for retail firms around the holidays. Grinch bots disrupt product launches and holiday sales, making it harder for customers to purchase in-demand, well-liked goods.

Bad bot assaults can grow rapidly due to AI's capacity to automate these procedures, which makes detection and prevention more difficult. To distinguish between hostile bots and legitimate users, retailers need to improve their bot detection skills. Neglecting to do so may lead to decreased client satisfaction, inventory problems, and lost sales.

As more and more shops depend on APIs to streamline transactions and include third-party services, API violations have become a major worry. They are responsible for 16.1% of AI-driven assaults against merchants. Cybercriminals frequently use artificial intelligence (AI) to find and take advantage of API flaws, which allow them to obtain sensitive data without authorization.

An average of 5,570 API attacks occur every day in the retail sector, most of which are API violations. API violations have serious potential repercussions, including the loss of customer confidence, financial fraud, and data breaches. Retailers need to put API security first by enforcing stringent access rules, carrying out regular security audits, and using AI-driven monitoring solutions to detect anomalies in API usage.

Cybersecurity Advice for a Secure and Safe Holiday Season

Retail organizations have two opportunities over the Christmas season: a chance to capitalize on more customer spending and a higher danger of cyberattacks. eCommerce companies will face increasingly sophisticated threats that take advantage of weaknesses and perpetrate fraud more precisely as AI capabilities proliferate.

The following advice should be followed by retail establishments to safeguard their clients and websites:

Be Ready for Increased Online Traffic: During the holiday shopping season, retailers should expect a spike in online traffic. They must make sure their infrastructure can manage this extra demand without compromising performance in order to get ready. In order to control traffic flow and preserve an equitable experience for authorized users during peak hours, this entails scaling servers, utilizing a content delivery network (CDN) for effective traffic distribution, and putting in place a waiting room queuing mechanism.

Create a Strategy for Managing Bots: Retailers can anticipate an increase in malicious bot traffic in addition to the flood of actual customers. To safeguard their platforms and guarantee that actual customers have a seamless purchasing experience, they must create a strong bot control policy. Important actions include assessing traffic threats, locating entry points, preventing the use of out-of-date user agents, restricting proxies, implementing rate limiting, and monitoring for signs of automation or headless browsers.

Protect Against Business Logic Abuse: AI makes it possible for attackers to automate business logic abuse on a bigger scale, which makes it harder to identify these assaults. Retailers should employ anomaly detection systems to identify anomalous activity, enforce strict validation on all user inputs, and regularly audit their business processes to find any weaknesses that could be exploited to protect themselves from such threats.

Invest in a DDoS solution: DDoS attacks are designed to overload a website's resources, causing downtime that can cost businesses sales and damage their reputation, especially during periods when sales are at their highest. To guarantee that legitimate consumers can continue to access services without any disruptions, retailers should invest in a DDoS prevention system that uses machine learning to detect and stop malicious traffic in real-time.

Secure APIs: Retailers should set a baseline for expected API activity, including average traffic rates and user regions, to proactively counteract automated applications and API misuse. This baseline aids in the detection of abnormalities that can point to malicious behavior, such as odd surges in less-used APIs. Rate limits by IP and session can also prevent misuse, and keeping a record of user activity makes it easier to monitor and look into any dangers.

Retailers should strengthen their operations and guarantee a safe shopping experience for their customers by comprehending the nature of AI-driven attacks and planning for the difficulties they may face. To stay ahead of changing cybercriminal strategies and guarantee a secure holiday shopping season for both retailers, ongoing attention to detail and the implementation of cutting-edge security technologies are essential.