There's plenty of threats to worry about when it comes to shopping at stores on on-line this Christmas.

An alert from Vulcan's Dave Swan, Director of the Cyber Intelligence Defence Centre and Centre for Strategic Cyberspace + Security Science, says "Point of Sale" systems are particularly vulnerable right now.

"They're looking at anybody who's got a "POS" system. And the attacks have shifted from the larger stores, the box stores, to smaller retailers, because the attackers believe there's less security and the attacks will go undetected."

He says there's plenty of fraud scams and computer attacks going on right now as well, pointing out several of those items you see "for sale" on your Facebook feed are likely scams.

Here's what Swan has to say in a release:

At risk of being called a party-pooper, or something worse, there are three important warnings that security managers need to keep in mind over the Christmas holidays.

1. Expect attacks on POS (Point of Sale) Systems.

Many of the attackers, the people behind POS attacks are NOT located in North America or Western Europe.

They don't celebrate Christmas on December 25th, so last minute Christmas sales and the Boxing Day sales season are perceived as opportunity.  

Any organization operating POS terminals should monitor their systems closely for indications of being hacked and/or a hardware replacement designed to compromise credit card data.

2. Expect an increase in Fraud scams and attacks, including cyber-fraud.

Historically there is a spike, an increase in fraud activity across the Christmas season.

Criminals take advantage of other peoples sense of goodwill to try scams.

The whole range of fraud will see increased activity from fake charities asking for donations to, credit card fraud and phishing attempts to steal computer credentials.

Remind both corporate staff as well as friends and family to maintain good computer security over the holidays.

3. Expect DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) Attacks.

Recent years have seen attacks on computer game networks across the Christmas holidays.

Networks attacked have included:

 - Microsoft XBox,
 - Sony PlayStation network,
 - EA Games

Be prepared to enjoy your console game system, offline or at least without the supporting network.

The greater threat this year is that there may be more 'high volume' DDoS attacks that could potentially shut-down parts of the Internet.

Attacks like the attack on Dyn and the attack on Brian Krebs should be expected.

Be prepared for the Internet to go 'down' multiple times over the holidays.

Stated another way, be prepared to go without your smart-phone, tablet or computer.

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