EAGER to watch highly-anticipated blockbusters for free, thousands of Internet-savvy users are downloading movies from many illegal sources online.
This has caught the attention of cyber criminals.
Cyber crooks were using new movie releases to distribute malware and Windows and Mac users were at risk, said Kannan Velayutham, Symantec Malay-sia's consultant for enterprise security.
(Malware, short for malicious software, is a software designed to infiltrate a computer without the owner's informed consent).
Kannan said the new trick by cyber criminals was to host a blog on a reputable website.
"This re-directs users to a website hosting malware. For example, to watch Obsessed featuring Beyonce Knowles for free online, users might search using keywords such as movie, free, video, online, and watch, along with the movie's name.
"A search phrase such as 'obsessed movie online free full video' will yield results that redirect them to a blog hosted on blogspot.com.
"Once the user clicks on an image that appears to be a video player window, it redirects to a codec download. (A codec is a computer programme that shrinks large movie files, and makes them playable on the computer).
"The codec is more often fake," said Kannan.
Other movies that have been targeted include Inkheart, 17 Again, Dragonball Evolution, American Violet, State of Play, Monsters vs Aliens, Hotels for Dogs and Fired Up.
Kannan said Internet users must watch out for social-engineering tricks.
"These deceive or tempt individuals to enable malicious code attacks. Users are advised to exercise caution when visiting free online movie sites. It is also critical for users to download applications, files, programs, software updates or codecs only from their official sites or from reputable and trustworthy sources.
"Ultimately, if something seems wrong or peculiar, it probably is."
No comments:
Post a Comment