Scammers, consumers, brands, and experts all play a cat and mouse game when it comes to fake shops and modern ecommerce. Each online shop sparks ideas for counterfeiters and cybercriminals, and each fake shop gives anti-scam experts a new insight about how to take them down. CDN, or Content Delivery Networks present one such technical battleground, as scammers exploit this digital architecture to launch and propagate their campaigns while evading detection.
Understanding more about CDN scams opens a window into the mind of a cybercriminal, giving brands and consumers a better chance to mitigate the next attack. In this article, we’ll explore the technical side of fake shop campaigns, and unpack exactly what makes them so effective and hard to handle. We’ll also highlight the best solutions, giving you the tools you need to fight back, and protect your brand.
CDN: What is a Content Delivery Network?
A content delivery network (CDN) speeds up content delivery by caching assets like HTML pages, images, and videos. Positioned close to end users, CDNs shorten the distance between users and web servers. Organizations use CDNs to efficiently deliver content around the world.
Scammer have long used CDN technology to power realistic fake online shops. However, the newer generation of evasive fake CDNs makes their content harder to identify and shut down. They often combine a CDN with a lookalike domain that impersonates a legitimate brand, like “ebr4nd.com” to impersonate EBRAND. Then, they set up fake CDNs under neutral-sounding domains, such as “cdn.normaldomain.com”. Combining a convincing lookalike domain with a neutral-looking CDN equips the fake shop with versatile content and an air of believability.
Crucially, the CDN structure also helps fraudsters distribute images, videos, and more across multiple fake stores. This tactic allows scammers to create redundancy and swap out content quickly. Even tech-savvy users struggle to spot the scams.
Why CDNs Make Fake Shops More Effective—and Harder to Take Down
CDNs offer advantages that make fake shops far more effective and challenging to eliminate. By caching and distributing content across multiple servers worldwide, they deliver speed, reliability, and reach—factors that fraudsters exploit to build convincing, efficient scams. Here’s how CDNs empower fake shops to deceive and persist:
1. Fast Load Times and Lower Latency
CDNs minimize load times and latency by delivering content from servers close to users. This speed allows fake shops to appear as responsive and reliable as legitimate ecommerce sites. Fast loading fake shops reduce user hesitation, drawing in consumers who may otherwise suspect a scam. For fraudsters, this also means a smoother experience that captures more victims before detection occurs.
2. High Availability and Redundancy
With servers around the globe, CDNs maintain high availability. If one server is down or blocked, the CDN redirects traffic to the next available server. This redundancy makes fake shops harder to remove; if authorities take down one site, other mirrored versions remain online. They thereby spin off new websites on the fly, without having to start from scratch every time. Buying tons of domains helps them redeploy the same infrastructure straight from their CDN files. This persistent network of fake shops creates a constant threat for brands, eroding trust with each new victim.
3. Innocent-Looking and Trustworthy Domains
By hosting fake shops under neutral, inconspicuous CDN domains (e.g., cdn.normaldomain.com), scammers shield their operations behind layers of legitimacy. The neutral appearance of a CDN link helps avoid raising red flags for consumers, who may not immediately suspect a problem. Fraudsters also often use innocent-seeming CDNs to deliver social media content, allowing them to seamlessly integrate fake shops with ads on platforms like Facebook.
4. Higher Ranking in Organic Search Results
Since Google favors fast-loading websites, CDNs can inadvertently boost the rankings of fake shops in search results. Better load times and low Time to Interactive scores (ideally under 3.8 seconds) can raise a site’s position, increasing visibility. Higher rankings drive more traffic to these fake sites, expanding the pool of potential victims before detection tools catch on.
5. Social Media Compatibility and Malvertising
CDNs allow scammers to effectively connect their fake shops with malvertising on social media. Fraudsters run ads directly linked to fake sites, often featuring time-sensitive “deals” that encourage impulse clicks. Social media ads typically have a short lifespan, and the high availability of CDN-backed fake sites keeps them live and reachable even after some ads are removed. These ads make fake shops appear legitimate, especially when layered with positive comments or endorsements.
For both brands and consumers, these CDN-powered fake shops present a serious risk. Scammers exploit the very features that make CDNs valuable to legitimate businesses, creating realistic and resilient fake shops that trick consumers and resist takedown efforts. Brands face reputational damage, and consumers lose funds and data. CDNs, while vital for online business, have inadvertently become a powerful tool in the toolkit of cybercriminals.
CDN Fake Shops in Action: A Recent Example
These fake shop tactics pose a genuine threat, both in theory and in practice. One recent case, dubbed the “Eriakos” campaign, highlights how dangerous these CDN-powered operations can be. Detected in April 2024, the Eriakos network promoted over 600 fake ecommerce sites through Facebook ads, targeting mobile users and directing them to counterfeit stores. The Eriakos campaign took advantage of psychological tactics, promoting eye-catching discounts that seemed too good to miss. Ads flooded Facebook with offers like an 87.5% discount on Nike sneakers, North Face jackets, and Amazon iPhones—prices that immediately captured attention. These “limited-time” deals created a false urgency, prompting quick clicks from users fearing they’d miss out.
To ensure wide reach, each fake domain was promoted through dozens, sometimes over a hundred, individual ads. This approach allowed the scammers to cast a large net, bypassing ad detection filters on social media. Even as Facebook’s filters blocked some of these ads, many others remained active, luring more victims to these fraudulent shops.
Once visitors arrived, the sites prompted them to enter payment information, claiming to secure these unbeatable discounts. In reality, the scammers used this information to siphon off funds and capture financial data for resale on dark web markets. The threat actors behind Eriakos demonstrated how a CDN can make a fraud network resilient: as Facebook occasionally flagged and removed some of their ads, the CDN-backed sites stayed active, quickly regenerating with fresh domains. This redundancy allowed the fake shops to persist across multiple domains, keeping their scam active and well-hidden.
Conclusions: How to Fight Back Against CDN Scams
CDN-based fake shop scams pose many challenges, but the more you know about them, the better your chances of detecting and taking them down. We at EBRAND detect and eliminate fake shops every day. Understanding how these scams operate is key to protecting your brand.
CDNs play a significant role in these scams by hosting high-quality imagery and stolen brand logos, giving fake shops a veneer of legitimacy. Using image recognition technology can help detect unauthorized use of your brand assets, allowing you to catch these threats early. It’s also important to stay vigilant against seemingly neutral domains hosting CDNs with potential malicious intent.
When it comes to takedowns, combining technical tactics, like registrar takedowns, with legal actions such as DMCA requests is your best defense. To learn more about takedown strategies, check out our expert guide.
However, the first step is regular monitoring. By actively tracking your brand online, you can uncover fake shops and protect your clients as soon as possible. To find out what’s out there right now, get a free fake shop audit here.
