Cybercriminals have been after personal data for years, but new technology is giving them a dangerous boost. Infostealers—malware that extracts sensitive data like passwords and credit card numbers—are becoming one of today’s biggest online threats because they are easy to use and hard to spot.



While conversations about online safety often peak during Cybersecurity Awareness Month, the reality is that vigilance is needed year-round. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Tracy Goldberg, Director of Cybersecurity at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed the damage infostealers can cause, how consumers can protect themselves, and how dark web threat intelligence is helping fight back against bad actors.





Protecting the Keys to the Kingdom



Malware has become a damaging force capable of shutting down systems and causing financial havoc—even to large-scale organizations. However, infostealers take this threat to another level, having been responsible for extracting billions of personal credentials.



“What makes it different from malware that we've seen in the past like keyloggers is that infostealers are extremely sophisticated, so they're capturing all kinds of data,” Goldberg said. “When you type in your username and password, they're capturing the browsing history and the cookies.”



“Some of these infostealers are sophisticated enough to capture screenshots, which is really frightening,” she said. “There are some infostealers out there that are specifically designed to target crypto wallets and digital wallets—all of that data can be captured.”



Their sophistication makes infostealers exceptionally difficult to detect and neutralize. The combination of stealth and power poses a serious challenge to the financial services industry on multiple fronts.



First, financial institutions must find ways to ensure the authenticity of online browsing and mobile banking sessions. Second, the industry must confront the reality that traditional passkeys and tokens are no longer sufficient to defend against modern malware.



“In the same way that password managers have risks, because if the password to the password manager is compromised in a data breach—and we know people use reuse passwords—then the keys to the kingdom are gone,” Goldberg said. “The same holds true in this environment for passkeys and digital wallets and tokens because oftentimes that encrypted data is held behind a site that is password-protected.”



“When we save passwords and browsing history, which most of us do, if that browser history or the cookies are compromised, then there's no reason for the cybercriminals to decrypt any data, they get access to where that data is housed,” she said. “It's an extremely concerning problem, and it's one that I don't think we're prepared for as an industry.”



The Cost of Convenience



Many of today’s emerging risks stem from the new digital paradigm. While digital payments and modern technologies offer transformational benefits, they have also introduced new vulnerabilities.



“If you have a credit card that is reissued and it's automatically updated to your digital wallet, if that cybercriminal has already gained access to the password and login credentials that give access to that digital wallet, when the new digital numbers are automatically updated, they have access to it,” Goldberg said.



“We have these digital wallets where our financial institution can reissue a compromised card to us digitally, which means we can start using that card before we get the physi...