Image by JP Pining
Filmaholics and movie buffs—or whichever name you want to be called—Trend Micro warns you to keep your eyes peeled against suspicious online movie-streaming sites.
Trend Micro, a global leader in producing security software and solutions, has detected over 1,500 fake movie streaming sites riding the hype of recent summer box office hits. From the analysis of data collected from late April to June 2013, the attacks dwell in the form of streaming pages through various social media platforms, luring users to download doubtful video players, register to streaming sites, or take up surveys that scammers use to generate financial gain.
Accounted for almost half of the traitorous links tracked by Trend Micro, then-anticipated movies Man of Steel and Fast and the Furious 6 were the top tempters of the fake sites, with fake link detections even before their big screen premieres.
“Summer blockbusters like ‘Man of Steel’ are typical cybercrime baits because they have been effective in tricking users into visiting shady websites. Be wary of sharing posts and clicking links that could propagate these scams,” said Paul Oliveria, Security Focus lead of Trend Labs, Trend Micro Incorporated. “As these movies have just been released, copies that are supposedly being streamed online are either fake or pirated, the latter of which is, by itself, risky and illegal.”
Based on Trendlabs’ analysis, “Iron Man 3” also got a high number of viewers along with the top two mentioned earlier. From the common keywords used that were expected to appear, ‘putlocker’, a UK-based file locker, came out as a surprise. The United States accounts for more than two-thirds of the traffic to these sites, with other countries following suit.
Trend Micro Smart Protection Network blocks the URLs relating to these bogus streaming sites. The Trend Micro Smart Protection Network cloud data-mining framework accurately identifies new threats, delivering global threat intelligence to all its services and effectively securing data against threats.
If you encounter eyebrow-raising, yet tempting words like ‘watch’, ‘online’, and ‘free’ while sufring, make sure to stay away from them. A great movie experience still comes from watching them on the big screen.
For more information, please visit this link: http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/man-of-steel-fast-and-furious-6-among-online-fraudsters-most-used-lures/