Flowers and hacker attacks on Valentine’s Day: beware of phishing emails

Even on Valentine’s Day, the day when love is celebrated, hackers are ready to strike. After all, we have learned it over the years: every anniversary is a good opportunity for cybercriminals, who thus exploit the intensification of online activities of unsuspecting victims.

Valentine’s Day: flowers, hackers and scams

A new Check Point Research (CPR) survey reveals that 12,441 new domains were registered in January with the words “Love” or “Valentine” in their name. An increasing trend of 54% compared to the average of the previous three months, e certainly not because hackers feel romantic. More generally, this is a much higher number than the overall increase in new domains in this period, which stood at 36%.

The trend continued in February: they were registered only in the first week over 2,900 new domains of this type. Of these approximately 1 in 10, based on the content or because of the suspicious URL, was found to be potentially dangerous.

The “romantic” phishing campaign

Earlier this month, CPR experts identified an email campaign from the name “Your Valentine’s Day gift has arrived!”. This was sent from multiple senders with addresses like info-tuB@untdstatdropromuniflamtionDZprQdIWz.com and with the sender name “Ace Hardware Reward” or “Home Depot”.

The content of the email showed an image of a gift card with a link to a website registered in December 2022. The domain is currently blocked (does not contain any real content), but it may have already been used the day the emails were sent, most likely to collect user or payment information.

We remind you, just as CPR reminds us, that phishing attacks, precisely because they are sneaky, represent a real threat in terms of cybersecurity. We therefore invite you to consult our guide to recognize and avoid them.