With 2025 on pace for a 10% increase in data breaches, cybersecurity is a pressing concern across all industries. This is particularly true of ecommerce, which processes hundreds of millions of transactions that include credit card data, personally identifiable information (PII), and customer behavioral data. Adding to the challenge, complex ecosystems of payment processors, fulfillment partners, APIs, cloud infrastructure, and other third-party integrations introduce numerous potential points of failure.

The ecommerce hacking playbook includes a combination of advanced techniques involving exploiting security vulnerabilities, social engineering, and third-party vendor breaches. Even the big brands aren’t immune. High-profile data security breach examples in 2025 include Victoria’s Secret, The North Face, Louis Vuitton, and Cartier. Knowing what these attacks look like is the first step in defense.

Digital skimming (Magecart attacks)

A Magecart attack is a type of digital skimming (aka “formjacking”) where threat actors inject malicious JavaScript code directly into checkout pages. When customers enter credit card or other personal information, the information is copied and sent to hackers to make fraudulent purchases, use for phishing, or sell on the dark web.

Attackers get access in several ways, including exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities, for example, in Adobe Commerce/Magento. Recently, hackers took advantage of the SessionReaper vulnerability to launch over 250 attacks on multiple stores. At the time, 62% of Magento stores had still not patched the flaw, six weeks after it was made public.

Credential stuffing and account takeover

Credential stuffing involves using automated bots to test stolen username/password combinations across multiple websites, exploiting the fact that 76% of people reuse passwords across accounts. Successful attacks let hackers use stored payment methods, steal loyalty points and gift card balances, access purchase history and PII, and sell valid credentials on the dark web.

Ransomware attacks

Ransomware attacks grew 37% in 2025, with ecommerce being a tasty target. Once inside a network, threat actors copy critical data and extort companies by encrypting systems (locking them out), as well as threatening to sell or leak the data, target customers, jack up inventory systems, and more if you don’t pay the ransom. To add pressure, hackers often launch ransomware attacks during high-impact periods around holidays or weekends.

Supply chain and third-party breaches

The biggest vulnerability for ecommerce companies is often vendors, because they’re interconnected. Attackers are increasingly targeting third-party providers with weaker security to gain access to multiple clients. A single breach can unlock a treasure trove of data from numerous retailers. Third-party vulnerabilities accounted for 30% of eCommerce data breaches last year—doubling the previous year’s rate.

Potential attack surfaces include:

• Payment processors and gateways
• Customer service platforms
• Analytics and marketing tools
• Fulfillment and logistics providers
• Cloud infrastructure providers

Phishing and social engineering

Threat actors have long relied on social engineering to trick people into giving them access, such as by clicking on a link in a spoofed email. With AI-generated phishing and deepfake impersonation, messages have become hyper-personalized and more deceptive than ever. Phishing emails often seem to come from an employer or IT staff and use convincing logos and personal details to gain trust. Once given access, attackers can deploy ransomware and steal customer data. Business Email Compromise (BEC) accounted for $2.8 billion stolen in the US last year.

Want to get deeper into data breaches? Check out our guide.

No single solution can stop 100% of threats. Hackers use multi-layered techniques to evade detection as they spread through your systems: living-off-the-land, fileless malware, residential proxy networks, distributed attacks across IP ranges, and many more.

Effective ecommerce security requires defense-in-depth, an approach spanning people, processes, and technology. With this strategy, if one control fails, another is there to jump in.

Employee education

Protecting against ecommerce hacking starts with training employees to recognize and report phishing, practice good password hygiene, use proper data handling, and avoid public WiFi risks. By creating a security-aware culture, you can reduce human-error-based breaches.

Application security

Robust application security is essential to minimize vulnerabilities. ecommerce sites require:

• SSL/TLS encryption: Renew SSL certificates regularly to make sure data traveling through your network is encrypted.
• Encrypt data at rest: Fight ransomware by securing your data using modern cryptography management.
• API security: Make sure that critical controls are active, such as rate limiting to guard against brute-force and DDoS attacks.
• Web application firewall (WAF): Deploy WAF in front of all public-facing applications, and configure custom rules for ecommerce-specific threats.
• Platform and software maintenance: Set an automated patching strategy with a priority-based cadence. Apply critical patches within 24–48 hours.

Third-party risk management

Before contracting with any vendor, run a security assessment and establish ongoing security requirements, such as annual security audits of critical vendors. Aim for these vendor access controls:

• Least privilege access: Vendors get only the minimum necessary access.
• Just-in-time access: Grant access only when needed, revoke immediately after.
• MFA enforcement: Require MFA for all vendor access.
• Access logging: Monitor and audit all vendor activities.

Finally, agree to an incident response plan with vendors so that, in the event of a breach, security teams can respond quickly.

Network security and monitoring

Segment your network. By isolating payment systems from the general corporate network, you can contain the damage any single breach can cause.

Engage a Security Operations Center (SOC) for 24/7, real-time threat detection across endpoints, network, and identity. AI-assisted, human-led incident investigation allows you to stop complex threats before they do substantial harm.

A SOC brings a multi-layered approach to monitoring network traffic for suspicious patterns and blocking attacks.

Layer 1: Identity Protection (Managed ITDR)

• Prevent account takeovers and credential theft.
• Stop BEC attacks targeting financial transactions.
• Detect session hijacking and MFA bypass.

Layer 2: Endpoint Security (Managed EDR)

• Block ransomware, malware, and fileless attacks.
• Detect persistence mechanisms and backdoors.
• Hunt advanced threats that traditional antivirus software misses.

Layer 3: Network Monitoring (Managed SIEM)

• Centralized visibility across all systems.
• Compliance documentation and reporting.
• Advanced correlation detecting multi-stage attacks.
• Long-term forensic capabilities.

Data security breach statistics show that cyber threats to ecommerce grow more sophisticated and persistent every year. The best way to guard against this evolving threat landscape is to adopt a defense-in-depth approach with a SOC watching your back at all times.

Huntress empowers your employees to be part of the cybersecurity solution with security awareness training (SAT), giving you personalized phishing defense coaching based on real threats our security experts see.