Malware Attackers Find Easy Prey the Free Livestreaming Services

According to one fresh study, Web surfers visiting free livestreaming online sites for enjoying video films can encounter different security risks, in particular, scams, theft of personal information, or malware infections.

To be more specific, the study substantiates that over 50% of the advertisements which surface on these websites are malevolent codes that could grab people's personal data or destruct their PCs.

The study, which security researchers from USA's Stony Brook University and Belgium's Katholieke Universiteit Leuven recently conducted, further unearthed that approximately fifty percent of the advertisement-superimposed movie clips on the freely available livestreaming sites contain malevolent content. What's more, these movie clips are streamed devoid of their owners' permission. Tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com posted this online dated June 16, 2016.

However, not till at present, anybody knew the extent of such malicious software's prevalence on livestreaming websites. Therefore, by building and using one automated tool, the researchers spotted over 23,000 freely available livestreaming sites that they subsequently visited 850,000 and greater number of times collectively prior to assessing the ensuing Web traffic.

Now according to Nick Nikiforakis of Stony Brook University who co-authored the study, the FLIS system quite comfortably employs deceptive mechanisms for making money by tricking any number of end-users. For instance, by utilizing the malevolent superimposed ads that show phony 'close' buttons on top of the video, end-users who actually press on these buttons become endangered with malware infection.

The study explains that the above practices as well as the oft made blame on copyright infringement, plainly indicates streaming services' tendency for carrying out intrusive as also sinister monetization scams by even undermining end-user security.

A large number of these web-pages appear as the real livestreaming sites. Naturally, end-users, thinking they are on the right destinations, unwittingly download malware. Among all Web browsers, Safari and Chrome have relatively the greater risk of being exposed to this ruse.

In the end, as per KU Leuven's M Zubair Rafique, the study like never before quantifies the danger that follows from the utilization of these free websites, adding that the researchers even brought into the open the FLIS system's faulty infrastructure.

» SPAMfighter News - 6/23/2016