Veracode Educates Consumers About the Risks of Online Shopping this Holiday Season

BURLINGTON, Mass. - (BUSINESS WIRE) - Veracode, Inc., the leader in cloud-based application security testing, today released a new infographic, "Identity Theft: Staying Safe in an Online World," that provides practical tips for keeping personal information safe when shopping online this holiday season. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are just days away, and many consumers will fall prey to countless schemes from hackers and spammers trying to gain access to Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

The theft of PII, such as PIN, bank account and social security numbers, is the first step in online crimes such as identity theft, credit card fraud and banking fraud. With identity theft becoming more prevalent, it should come as no surprise that there were more than 4,500 new types of attacks via the Internet each day in 2011, costing consumers and businesses a total of $1.52 billion.

Every day, hackers become more sophisticated and effective in their attacks, taking advantage of poorly coded Web application software to introduce malicious code into networks. One of the most common attacks, SQL injection, exists when a Web application fails to properly filter or validate the data a user might enter on a Web page - such as when ordering something online - and lets unauthorized third parties such as hackers gain direct access to confidential back-end data.