Kaspersky: Beware of phishing and virus campaigns with Star Wars launched
Cyber criminals often use popular and powerful movies to taste the malware distribution, and the new epic "Star Wars" movie is no exception to this rule: the last part of the new trilogy of "Star Wars" films this year caught the attention of the attackers even before the premiere. , With the spread of many phishing sites and malicious files related to the film on the Internet.
Popular films create fertile ground for cyberattacks as one of the users' favorite and free entertainment. The means of distributing films on the Internet, such as broadcasting channels and "Torrent" and others, often violate the intellectual property rights, publishing and distribution of the content, but it is still popular due to its being a source of free content. And software for tracking the "BitTorrent" platform, in addition to illegal broadcasting platforms, threatens digital security for users, as it can host malicious files hidden behind movie files.
Kaspersky explored this trend, in the way that the disruptive Internet exploits the name of the movie, "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker", the world famous for the deception of his fans and his watchers. Today, Thursday, attracts cyber criminals.
Kaspersky researchers have found more than 30 fake social media sites and pages impersonating the film's official accounts and claiming to distribute free copies of it, while company experts believe that the actual number of these sites and pages may be much higher. These websites seize unsuspecting user credit card data, arguing that it is necessary to register for the film.
Usually used websites collect personal data and publish malicious files by copying the movie's official name to the website address, while providing comprehensive descriptions and supportive content, which deceives users and makes them believe that the site has an official relationship with the movie. This practice is called “black optimization of search engines”, which enables criminals to promote phishing sites by giving them a high ranking in search engine results, and these results often appear when searching with the phrase: name-of-the-film watch free (watch [movie] for free ).
Cybercriminals also create accounts on "Twitter" and other social media to distribute links to malicious content, in order to support the promotion of sites, which, along with malicious files distributed via "Bit", contribute to achieving the desired results for criminals. To date, 83 users have been affected by 65 malicious files that masquerade as copies of the upcoming movie.
Phishing is not the only way in which cyber criminals tend to exploit the popularity of movies, as is the case with famous TV series, criminals often hide malware with deceptive characteristics such as "an episode of the series." And in 2019, Kaspersky discovered 285,103 attempts to hit 37,772 users who were tryaing to watch the famous "Space Opera" movies, up 10% compared to last year. The number of unique files used to target users was 11,499 files, a decrease of 30% from last year. The data shows that even years after the movie premiered, many users still risk taking malicious files in the hope of watching popular space adventures for free.
Titiana Sidorina, Kaspersky Security Researcher said: It is common for fraudsters and cyber criminals to try to take advantage of popular topics, noting that "Star Wars" is one of "the most prominent and interesting topics this month," and added: "While the attackers can raise Malicious websites and disruptive content in ranking results on search engines, the public should be careful at all times, we advise users not to be drawn into such tricks, and enjoy the epic instead on the big screen.
Kaspersky recommends users to take the following measures to avoid becoming a victim of sabotage software that pretends to be popular movies or TV shows:
- Pay attention to the start dates of official screenings of movies in cinemas, via direct broadcast services, on television or other sources.
- Avoid clicking on suspicious links, such as promising early screening for a new movie before its official date, while checking the dates when movies start showing.
- Be sure to check the file extension being downloaded, so even if a video file from a source is considered to be reliable and official, the file must have an avi, mkv, mp4 or any other video format, but not the .exe extension.
- Website validation, being careful not to access websites that allow movies to watch until you are sure that they are official and reliable and that their web address starts with https. You can confirm that the website is authentic by checking the URL format or checking the company name, reading the reviews and reviews shown thereon, and checking domain registration data, before proceeding to download any content.
- Use a reliable security solution, such as Kaspersky Security Cloud, for comprehensive protection against a wide range of threats.
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