FBI warns of gift card fraud ring targeting retail companies

The FBI warns that a financially motivated threat actor tracked as Storm-0539 has been targeting U.S. retail gift card departments since at least January 2024 using sophisticated phishing/smishing kits that bypass multi-factor authentication, enabling lateral movement, credential and SSH key theft, and the fraudulent creation and redemption of gift cards; Microsoft corroborated a surge in related activity. The advisory urges retailers to update incident response plans, enforce MFA and least-privilege, improve employee phishing awareness, and deploy up-to-date endpoint protections to mitigate this ongoing campaign.