Cybercriminals Register 18,000 Holiday-Themed Domains to Launch Seasonal Scams

The holiday season has always been a magnet for increased online activity, but 2025 marks a new high-water mark in cybercrime intensity.

FortiGuard Labs’ latest research spotlights a dramatic surge in the volume and sophistication of attacks targeting retailers, e-commerce providers, and consumers during key shopping events.

Attackers are leveraging automation, AI-powered infrastructure, and sophisticated dark web services to orchestrate wide-scale campaigns designed to capitalize on the annual spike in online transactions.

In the last three months, over 18,000 domains with holiday themes such as “Christmas,” “Black Friday,” and “Flash Sale” were registered, with at least 750 confirmed as malicious.

These domains create a web of fraudulent storefronts, targeted phishing pages, and payment-data skimming operations.

The distinction between confirmed and unconfirmed malicious domains signals a vast gray zone; many new registrations are dormant but potentially dangerous.

Simultaneously, attackers registered over 19,000 domains designed to mimic major retail brands, 2,900 of which have already been confirmed as malicious.

Typosquatting and slight variations in brand names make it easier for unsuspecting shoppers to land on these traps during high-traffic events.

SEO poisoning campaigns further amplify risk by pushing dangerous URLs higher in search results during peak shopping periods, making hurried customers even more vulnerable.

The threat report highlights a meteoric rise in stolen account data. More than 1.57 million login credentials tied to major retailers were traded via stealer logs on underground marketplaces over the recent quarter.

These logs containing passwords, cookies, session tokens, and autofill data are indexed and sold through platforms that now offer search filters, reputation scoring, and automated delivery.

The bar for entry is lower than ever, enabling even unskilled attackers to launch account takeover and credential stuffing attacks at scale.

A new trend: “holiday sales” on the dark web, where card dumps and CVV datasets are sold at discounted prices, directly tying cybercrime activity to seasonal marketing events.

E-Commerce Vulnerabilities

Attackers are targeting critical vulnerabilities in mainstream e-commerce solutions:

Compromises often stem from vulnerabilities in plugins, templates, and authentication flows. Magecart-style JavaScript injection remains a significant problem attackers can skim payment data directly from checkout pages, causing widespread, difficult-to-detect fraud.

Threat actors now rely on an industrialized ecosystem of cybercrime services. AI-powered brute-force tools simulate human behavior to bypass rate limits.

Credential validation kits, instant-setup phishing hosting, and website-cloning services allow rapid deployment of new campaigns.

Bulk proxy and VPN tools offer geographic and IP diversification, evading geofencing controls. Smishing and vishing operations leverage automated SIP and SMS spam panels to spam consumers with fake delivery notifications and sale offers.

SEO manipulation services are marketed to push these malicious URLs higher in holiday-themed searches. In parallel, attackers install payment skimmers and backdoors on vulnerable CMS platforms, extracting data over extended periods.

The criminal economy behind e-commerce compromise is highly organized. Full databases, WooCommerce records, payment tokens, cookies, and administrative access to high-revenue sites are openly sold.

Accomplice recruitment for rapid cash-out and laundering further accelerates monetization.

Stolen sessions with active shopping histories are especially prized these closely mimic real-user activity and evade most real-time fraud detection systems.

What Can CISOs and Businesses Do?

Business leaders must recognize that the holiday threat landscape now reflects broader, persistent trends in attacker automation and organization. Defensive measures are critical:

• Update all e-commerce platforms, plugins, and integrations.
• Enforce HTTPS and secure all sessions and admin interfaces.
• Require MFA, strong passwords, and proactive credential monitoring.
• Use bot management, rate limiting, and anomaly detection.
• Monitor for lookalike domains and pursue swift takedown actions.
• Scan for unauthorized script and payment-page tampering.
• Centralize event logging for rapid response.
• Train security, fraud, and support teams in joint escalation protocols.

Consumers should double-check URLs, use secure payment methods, enable MFA, avoid public Wi-Fi, and remain skeptical of unsolicited messages.

Fortinet solutions such as FortiGate, FortiMail, and FortiClient defend against these advanced campaigns.

Real-time detection, web filtering, anti-phishing, and incident response are integrated to safeguard organizations and their customers against seasonal and persistent cyber threats.

For expanded threat intelligence, tactical recommendations, and full data sets, download the full FortiRecon Cyberthreat Landscape Overview for the 2025 Holiday Season.

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