Computer maker Apple announced via its Website plans for a special one-day
sale on Black Friday, the annual, unofficial kickoff to the holiday shopping
season the day after Thanksgiving. "Come back to the Apple Online Store
the day after Thanksgiving for a special one-day-only holiday shopping event,"
the site said. "You'll find dozens
of great iPad, iPod, and Mac gifts for everyone on your list."
One question on many consumers' minds is what kinds of discounts if any Apple
is preparing to offer on its iPad tablet, which has been selling well since its
debut earlier this year. In years past, Apple has offered deals on a variety of
devices, including notebooks, Apple TV appliances and iPods.
The company won't be alone in offering tempting deals—Best Buy, Amazon,
Walmart and a host of other retailers—online and in brick-and-mortar stores—are
rolling out a slew of bargains. In addition, Apple's App Store is crowded with
applications designed to help consumers make the most of these deals.
However temping deals from Apple or other electronics retailers may seem,
consumers have cause to shop cautiously. Attackers have set their sights on
holiday shoppers searching for leaked Black Friday ads, creating malicious
sites that appear on search engine result pages, according to a Nov. 18 alert
by IT security firm SonicWall. Called SEO poisoning, hackers create these pages
that Google and other search engines pick up thinking they are legitimate, and
return them when users type in the search terms.
Security experts at SonicWall UTM Research discovered "polluted"
results appearing in search engine results for holiday shopping-related terms
in advance of Black Friday sales, the company said. These links take users to a
malicious site that tricks users into downloading malware. The terms include
"Walmart Black Friday Sales 2010," "Black Friday" and
"Cyber Monday," according to researchers.
PandaLabs, Panda Security's anti-malware laboratory, is advising holiday
shoppers to be extra wary when shopping online this holiday season. The company
noted most of the malware it sees today is specifically built for extracting credit
card information, Social Security numbers and other data, which can be used to
facilitate identity theft. In fact, 66 percent of the threats in PandaLabs'
malware database are Trojans that specialize in sensitive data extraction.
"Cyber-criminals know this Friday and Monday are two of the biggest
shopping days of the year, and Americans are going to be sharing tons of
sensitive data online during this period," said Sean-Paul Correll, threat
researcher at PandaLabs. "It's more important than ever for shoppers to
follow best practices to avoid infecting their computers or turning over their
private information into dangerous hands."
Correll said cyber-criminals are particularly skilled at exploiting critical
vulnerabilities in operating systems and commonly used applications. Computer
users are often silently redirected to a Website with a carefully crafted
malicious payload that leaves the computer infected with data-stealing malware
or extortion-based threats. In addition to updating your system, PandaLabs
strongly advised consumers to update Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader and Java
software, which are all commonly targeted by cyber-criminals.
"Cyber-criminals have no limits, and will create fake advertisements [and]
shopping carts, poison various search terms and more in order to infect your
computer and steal your personal data," a PandaLabs security alert warned.
"If you're unsure if a site is legitimate, run a search online to see if
you can determine whether it's widely known. If you can't find details on a
retailer, PandaLabs advises holiday shoppers to take their business elsewhere."
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Midmarket News & Reviews 
