A New Threat to Retail: How Hackers Exploit Cloud Systems for Gift Card Fraud
The digital gift card market is booming, offering convenience for consumers and a steady revenue stream for retailers. However, this growth has also painted a target on the industry for sophisticated cybercriminals. A new and alarming attack vector has emerged, showing how threat actors are moving beyond simple scams to infiltrate corporate networks and generate fraudulent gift cards directly from the source.
These attacks represent a significant evolution in retail cybercrime. Instead of stealing existing gift card numbers from customers, criminals are now compromising employee cloud accounts to access internal gift card generation systems. This allows them to create and issue millions of dollars in illegitimate store credit, which they can then quickly convert into cash or high-value goods.
The Anatomy of a Modern Gift Card Heist
This advanced attack strategy is insidious because it leverages legitimate tools and access, making it incredibly difficult to detect. The process typically unfolds in several distinct stages:
The Initial Compromise: The attack often begins with a targeted social engineering campaign. Cybercriminals use smishing (SMS phishing) or voice phishing to trick employees, particularly new hires, into providing their corporate login credentials. They are adept at manipulating victims into approving multi-factor authentication (MFA) prompts, granting them an initial foothold in the organization’s cloud environment.
Gaining a Foothold: Once inside, the attackers use the compromised employee’s cloud account (such as Microsoft 365 or Azure) as a launchpad. They explore the corporate network, searching for access to virtual machines, internal SharePoint sites, and management portals. Their primary goal is to locate the systems responsible for managing the company’s gift card program.
Issuing Fraudulent Cards: After identifying the target system, the attackers exploit their access to issue new, high-value gift cards. They often use legitimate administrative tools like PowerShell or command-line interfaces to execute these commands, making their activity appear as normal operational traffic. This “living off the land” technique helps them evade traditional security software, which is designed to spot malicious files, not malicious commands from a seemingly legitimate user.
Cashing Out: The final step is to monetize the fraudulent cards. Attackers quickly use the funds to purchase expensive, easy-to-resell electronics like laptops and smartphones. They often utilize “buy online, pick up in store” (BOPIS) options to collect the goods immediately, bypassing the shipping and address verification processes that could raise red flags.
Why This Tactic is So Dangerous
This method is far more damaging than traditional gift card fraud. By creating new funds from within a retailer’s own system, the potential losses are virtually unlimited. The key dangers include:
- Bypassing Traditional Security: The attack relies on stolen, legitimate credentials and approved MFA access, which can bypass many perimeter security measures.
- Difficult to Detect: Because the attackers use the company’s own tools and infrastructure, their activity can blend in with the daily operations of an IT department.
- Significant Financial Losses: A single breach can result in the fraudulent creation of thousands of gift cards, leading to massive and immediate financial damage before the scheme is even discovered.
Actionable Steps to Protect Your Business
Retailers are not powerless against these threats. A proactive, multi-layered security strategy is essential to defend against these sophisticated attacks. Businesses should prioritize the following measures:
- Bolster Authentication: Move beyond simple push-based MFA. Implement phishing-resistant authentication methods like FIDO2 security keys or certificate-based authentication, which cannot be easily bypassed through social engineering.
- Enforce the Principle of Least Privilege: Ensure that employees only have access to the systems and data absolutely necessary for their job roles. An employee in marketing, for example, should have no access to the gift card generation API or financial management portals.
- Monitor Cloud Environments Vigorously: Actively monitor for anomalous behavior within your cloud infrastructure. Flag suspicious activities like logins from unusual locations, access to sensitive systems outside of business hours, or the use of administrative tools by non-IT staff.
- Isolate Critical Systems: Your gift card management platform should be highly secured and isolated from the general corporate network. Access should be restricted to a very small number of authorized personnel and require additional layers of verification.
- Enhance Employee Training: Continuously educate all employees, especially new ones, about the dangers of phishing, smishing, and voice phishing. Conduct regular drills to ensure they can recognize and report social engineering attempts effectively.
As cybercriminals refine their methods, businesses must adapt their defenses. By understanding this new threat and implementing robust security controls, retailers can better protect their assets, maintain customer trust, and secure their digital gift card programs from sophisticated exploitation.
Source: https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2025/10/22/cloud-based-techniques-gift-card-fraud/
