Amazon.com is facing cyber security concerns as hackers are said to have targeted third party and independent sellers on the platform to post fake deals and steal money directly from some accounts, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
In recent weeks, hackers have changed bank-deposit information on Amazon accounts of active sellers to allegedly steal tens of thousands of dollars from each and also infiltrated Amazon accounts of sellers who haven’t used them recently to post nonexistent merchandise at steep discounts in an attempt to collect cash, according to the report.
In the report, Juozas Kaziukėnas, chief executive of Marketplace Pulse, a business-intelligence firm focused on e-commerce, said, “Hacking Amazon is becoming… increasingly a big deal. The value to be gained is bigger as Amazon grows.”
Cybersecurity experts said that in some cases the hackers have bought account information from previously hacked companies, and more than 2.6 billion email addresses and passwords have been stolen in total from companies including Adobe Systems, Myspace and LinkedIn Corp., typically selling for between $1 and $3 apiece and sometimes accompanied by hacking tutorials, according to the report.
The report also stated that while the full extent of the issue is still unclear, some sellers said it has shaken their confidence in Amazon’s security measures.
An Amazon spokesman told The Wall Street Journal that the company “is constantly innovating on behalf of customers and sellers to ensure their information is secure and that they can buy and sell with confidence. There have always been bad actors in the world who try to take advantage of consumers for financial gain; however, as fraudsters get smarter so do we.”
