Reality TV Show Audience are Cybercriminals’ Fresh Prey

Security experts at Internet security firm Trend Micro revealed that cybercriminals are now attacking the viewers of reality TV shows.

Abhinav Karnwal, Technical Marketing Manager (APEC), Trend Micro, stated that reality TV shows have grown hugely in popularity and have now become a growing medium to earn both name and fame. As a result, people are getting increasingly attracted to be a part of these shows (as a viewer or as a contestant), according to the news published by mydigitalfc.com in the final week of April 2010.

Karnwal added that number of viewers voting for their favorite contestants via text messages or through the Internet is increasing very fast. This increasing popularity of reality TV shows has thus given a good chance to cybercriminals who have already began targeting voters.

According to reports, popular Indian TV shows like Indian Idol and Dance India Dance are believed to be on the prime target of cybercriminals. These shows have majority of young viewers who show higher preference for online voting.

Karnwal said that as blackhat search engine optimization (SEO) attacks leading to FAKEAV are continuously increasing, cybercriminals are quite likely to dominate the top Web searches. So there is always a possibility that top searches for different reality shows in India might fall a victim of these attacks.

Trend Micro's own findings seem to very well support the statement of Karnwal. According to the firm, online attacks in Asia were dominated by the blackhat SEO techniques during January-March 2010. Trend Micro's data suggests that although blackhat SEO is not a completely new technique, exploiting keywords related to issues in trend continues to be a highly effective tool for spreading malware.

Trend Micro has also found that countries having higher Internet penetration and technology dependency, like Israel, US, China, India and the UK, are more susceptible to blackhat SEO attacks.

As growing threat from SEO attacks may result in malicious downloads, security experts have suggested users to always have firewall protection in place along with good anti-virus solution from a trusted vendor.

» SPAMfighter News - 5/7/2010