New eCommerce Bot Attacks, Thwarted by reCAPTCHA

Our highest priority is staying on top of website security. In addition to our suite of software, we have recently begun to integrate Google’s reCAPTCHA service throughout all of our e-commerce sites. reCAPTCHA is a simple and effective way to add an extra layer of security to WordPress websites. reCAPTCHA is similar to CAPTCHA, which stands for a Completely Automated Public Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. It exists to make sure that human beings are the ones using websites and makes access deliberately difficult for bots.

Speaking of bots…
A new and sophisticated bot attack has become more prominent among e-commerce websites that process credit card payments. These bots attempt to run thousands of transactions using stolen credit cards from the dark web. The attack is very disruptive and can cause a payment gateway provider to stop all transactions for up to 24 hours, rendering harm to the owner of the website. It’s likely that the purpose of this attack is to test if any of the stolen credit cards are actually valid, then use them for other forms of fraud.

Deploying Google’s reCAPTCHA service will block or limit the damage done by these attacks, and most importantly keep our clients’ sites open for business with over a 99.9% uptime. To learn more details about Google’s reCAPTCHA service click here.

Any questions or interest in our support services regarding reCAPTCHA or any related security improvements, including setting up two factor authentication at login, please contact us.