Incopro says that Top Piracy Sites in UK Contain Malware and Scams

Nearly all the UK's favorite film and television piracy sites have malware or credit card swindles, as per a study conducted by Incopro or Intelligent Content Protection, a consultancy dedicated to anti-piracy services, reported torrentinvites.org on April 30, 2014. The report was commissioned by the Industry Trust for Intellectual Property Awareness.

While studying, Incopro analyzed 30 most visited sites offering access to copyright infringing content and identified only 1 website free of such threats.

Incopro's research on 30 top pirate sites reveals that 90% contained malware and other PUPs (Potentially Unwanted Programs) designed to trick or defraud naive viewers.

The PUP category is rather broad and includes pop-ups and ads linking to download managers. Additionally, the report associates one-third of the websites to credit card scams.

Torrentfreak.com reported on 30th April, 2014 quoting Kieron Sharp, Director General of FACT (Federation against Copyright Theft) as saying that those who fall for these scams are unintentionally funding organized crime.

It is true that many pirate sites link to malware and other doubtful products but these sites on their own don't host any of the content.

Incopro writes: "We did not come across the automatic injection of any malevolent program on the sites we scanned. In all instances, the user must be tricked to open a downloaded executable file or should have entered particulars of credit card to be victim of credit card scam."

The study highlights that the piracy websites often rely on social engineering technique to trick users to click fraudulent links as these fake play buttons are very much driven by the desire of populace to download the material which is a type of social engineering attack on the Internauts who are duped into downloading content.

To fight piracy continuously, copyright holders might have more success to inform users about security threats if they download stuff and make them exploitable - it would be exclusive twist on some basic scare tactics.

The research concludes that cybercriminals will continue to use piracy and online pornography sites as effective means to hijack site visitors and making users to download unwanted content.

» SPAMfighter News - 5/12/2014