Users who want to watch the London 2012 Olympic Games online are advised to be on the lookout for shady sites that claim to offer live streaming services. Experts have identified over 80 different domains utilized by cybercriminals to scam unsuspecting individuals.
Kaspersky and Trend Micro researchers explain that the crooks rely on black hat SEO techniques to make sure that their malicious websites show up among the first in search engine results.
Internauts who are searching for “watch london olympics opening ceremony live”, “watch london olympics online” and “watch london olympics 2012 live” may end up being directed to domains controlled by cybercrooks.
The scam sites are well designed, bearing all sorts of logos and symbols to make them official-looking.Some of them sell fake tickets and request email addresses from the victim. On the other hand, others request a certain amount of money in exchange for the live broadcasts.
A certain website found by Kaspersky asks the victim to pay around $50 (40 EUR) before starting the live video stream.
The security firm has determined that close to 10,000 clicks have already been redirected to the fraudulent Olympics website.
Overall, a number of 38,000 clicks have been redirected to such sites, the victims being spread out across 100 countries.
As the researchers highlighted on August 1, if 1% of the 38,000 potential victims actually fell for these scams, the cybercriminals earned around $19,000 (15,000 EUR).
Experts are also warning users to beware of rogue London 2012 Android applications hosted on alternative app markets. An Android program called London2012-Official game has been found to hide a piece of malware identified as ANDROIDOS_SMSBOXER.
In case you want to follow the Games via the Internet, we recommend that you use only trusted sources. Remember, just because a site shows up on the first page in a Google search doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s safe.
Take Care
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