In the list of threats: "Game of Thrones" - one of the most popular covers for cybercriminals
Hi, Habr! I present to you the translation of the article "ThreatList: Game of Thrones, a Top Malware Conduit for Cybercriminals" by Tara Seals.
While the 8th season of the Game of Thrones is preparing to start, new research shows that last year a popular TV show served as a cover for malicious software on pirate sites in 17% of cases.
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As the eighth season of the series “Game of Thrones” ( Eng. “Game of Thrones”, GoT ) approaches, fans are preparing for the greatest clash of the living and the dead, fire and flame, people and monsters. At the same time, they have to be careful about where they get the next intoxicating portion of John Snow: the latest research has concluded that the fantastic series is the favorite goal of cybercriminals to disguise malware as pirated content.
Game of Thrones accounted for 17% of all infected pirated content tracked by researchers in conjunction with Kaspersky Lab, with a total of 20,934 attacked users - and this despite the fact that in 2018 not a single season was released. This result shows that the series is the most popular target of its kind, despite the fact that he, according to research, is only the eighth most popular on illegal platforms; the same series did not hit the top 10 in popularity on torrent trackers.
According to the report of Kaspersky Lab, released on Monday ( 04/01/2019 ): “In many regions, popular programs are distributed illegally, such as torrent trackers and streaming platforms without authorization. Unlike legal resources, torrent trackers and file sharing services can push the user to download malware as a series episode. ”
It is worth admitting that the possibility of getting something for free has a certain appeal. As a result, at a time when people should have long been aware that downloading pirated content is a high-stakes game that can lead to a general infection of the user's device, the reality is that using illegal markets to access popular content (especially to the one that was originally published on premium channels) in practice it blooms.
The eighth and final season of the cult series, filmed under the auspices of the cable channel HBO, starts on April 14 and its fans are highly anticipated. At the same time, not all of them have a subscription to the specified channel. Thus, it is expected that pirated sites will retain their popularity.
The danger lies not only in the new episodes: a drunken revision of previous seasons before the premiere also remains a popular pastime. For example, the first season of GoT - “Winter is close” - is the most popular target of all seasons of the series, according to the findings of Kaspersky Lab.
However, in 2019, the company does not expect a decline in the dominance of Game of Thrones in the number of infected content. Figuratively speaking, Malvar is close.
“The first and last episodes that attract the largest number of users are likely to be in the zone of the greatest risk spoofing,” says Anton Ivanov, a security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, in the analysis. “Online fraudsters prone to exploiting human affection and impatience may offer freshly baked material to download, which is in fact a security threat. Keeping in mind that the final season of Game of Thrones begins this month, we would like to warn users that, in all likelihood, there will be a sharp jump in the number of malicious software disguised as new episodes of the series. ”
GoT but alone in its appeal to pirates (and, therefore, to cybercriminals). The TV series “The Walking Dead” ( Eng. “The Walking Dead” ) and “Arrow” (Eng. “Arrow”) were the next most popular targets for malicious attackers that spread malware. With their help, 18,794 and 12,163 users were attacked, respectively.
“It is clearly visible that malware distributors use TV shows that have a high demand on pirated sites; these shows, as a rule, are actively advertised dramas or action-series, ”says A. Ivanov.
The report shows that the total number of attacked users is 126,340, which is one third less than in 2017 (188,769). This decrease, however, is smaller than in other segments. Kaspersky Lab states that, for comparison, the number of users exposed to malicious software delivered through other types of content, including pornography, in 458 fell by 2018.
“This decrease may be due to some events that potentially affected the decrease in the number of downloaded torrent files,” the speaker notes. “First, in 2018, Google lowered the priority of more than 65,000 torrent trackers to the main distributor of pirated TV shows - making it impossible for them to find a huge number of users when searching for the series. Active actions against torrent trackers significantly change the picture: more and more of them are blocked or their activity becomes more difficult. For example, the two largest torrent trackers (Pirate Bay and Demonoid) have recently been significantly affected by functional collapse, and the oldest, Leechers Paradise, has been closed forever. ”
In order to exclude the possibility of becoming a victim of malicious files under the guise of TV programs, users must once and for all abandon pirated content. If they, nevertheless, cannot avoid downloading, you should make sure that the downloaded files have the extension avi, .mkv or mp4, and not .exe.
While the 8th season of the Game of Thrones is preparing to start, new research shows that last year a popular TV show served as a cover for malicious software on pirate sites in 17% of cases.
')
As the eighth season of the series “Game of Thrones” ( Eng. “Game of Thrones”, GoT ) approaches, fans are preparing for the greatest clash of the living and the dead, fire and flame, people and monsters. At the same time, they have to be careful about where they get the next intoxicating portion of John Snow: the latest research has concluded that the fantastic series is the favorite goal of cybercriminals to disguise malware as pirated content.
Game of Thrones accounted for 17% of all infected pirated content tracked by researchers in conjunction with Kaspersky Lab, with a total of 20,934 attacked users - and this despite the fact that in 2018 not a single season was released. This result shows that the series is the most popular target of its kind, despite the fact that he, according to research, is only the eighth most popular on illegal platforms; the same series did not hit the top 10 in popularity on torrent trackers.
According to the report of Kaspersky Lab, released on Monday ( 04/01/2019 ): “In many regions, popular programs are distributed illegally, such as torrent trackers and streaming platforms without authorization. Unlike legal resources, torrent trackers and file sharing services can push the user to download malware as a series episode. ”
It is worth admitting that the possibility of getting something for free has a certain appeal. As a result, at a time when people should have long been aware that downloading pirated content is a high-stakes game that can lead to a general infection of the user's device, the reality is that using illegal markets to access popular content (especially to the one that was originally published on premium channels) in practice it blooms.
The eighth and final season of the cult series, filmed under the auspices of the cable channel HBO, starts on April 14 and its fans are highly anticipated. At the same time, not all of them have a subscription to the specified channel. Thus, it is expected that pirated sites will retain their popularity.
The danger lies not only in the new episodes: a drunken revision of previous seasons before the premiere also remains a popular pastime. For example, the first season of GoT - “Winter is close” - is the most popular target of all seasons of the series, according to the findings of Kaspersky Lab.
However, in 2019, the company does not expect a decline in the dominance of Game of Thrones in the number of infected content. Figuratively speaking, Malvar is close.
“The first and last episodes that attract the largest number of users are likely to be in the zone of the greatest risk spoofing,” says Anton Ivanov, a security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, in the analysis. “Online fraudsters prone to exploiting human affection and impatience may offer freshly baked material to download, which is in fact a security threat. Keeping in mind that the final season of Game of Thrones begins this month, we would like to warn users that, in all likelihood, there will be a sharp jump in the number of malicious software disguised as new episodes of the series. ”
GoT but alone in its appeal to pirates (and, therefore, to cybercriminals). The TV series “The Walking Dead” ( Eng. “The Walking Dead” ) and “Arrow” (Eng. “Arrow”) were the next most popular targets for malicious attackers that spread malware. With their help, 18,794 and 12,163 users were attacked, respectively.
“It is clearly visible that malware distributors use TV shows that have a high demand on pirated sites; these shows, as a rule, are actively advertised dramas or action-series, ”says A. Ivanov.
The report shows that the total number of attacked users is 126,340, which is one third less than in 2017 (188,769). This decrease, however, is smaller than in other segments. Kaspersky Lab states that, for comparison, the number of users exposed to malicious software delivered through other types of content, including pornography, in 458 fell by 2018.
“This decrease may be due to some events that potentially affected the decrease in the number of downloaded torrent files,” the speaker notes. “First, in 2018, Google lowered the priority of more than 65,000 torrent trackers to the main distributor of pirated TV shows - making it impossible for them to find a huge number of users when searching for the series. Active actions against torrent trackers significantly change the picture: more and more of them are blocked or their activity becomes more difficult. For example, the two largest torrent trackers (Pirate Bay and Demonoid) have recently been significantly affected by functional collapse, and the oldest, Leechers Paradise, has been closed forever. ”
In order to exclude the possibility of becoming a victim of malicious files under the guise of TV programs, users must once and for all abandon pirated content. If they, nevertheless, cannot avoid downloading, you should make sure that the downloaded files have the extension avi, .mkv or mp4, and not .exe.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/447038/
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