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Illegal football streaming sites are absolutely riddled with dangerous malware
Analysis of illegal websites used by hundreds of thousands to stream football matches worldwide has revealed fans are putting themselves at considerable risk.
According to a report from cybersecurity firm Webroot, almost all (92%) illegal football streaming websites contain some form of malicious content, from malware and phishing lures to social engineering scams.
The likelihood is, Webroot claims, that anyone that used an illegal website to watch last weekend’s Carabao Cup Final or action from Europe’s top domestic leagues will have been exposed to a sophisticated cryptocurrency scam designed to lift banking credentials.
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In other cases, the sites analyzed were equipped with mechanisms to hijack the victim’s web browser, poisoning search results and taking control of push notifications to bombard the person with malicious ads.
Illegal football streaming
With subscriptions for legitimate sports channels costing tens of dollars each month (and even more for the multiple subscriptions required to access all matches), many people are willing to take a gamble on illegal websites.
Although some will be blind to the risks, many others take every possible step to protect themselves, by always using a VPN and antivirus service and taking care when closing out tabs and pop-ups. However, Webroot maintains it is impossible to use illegal football streaming websites without incurring risk.
“These illegal streaming sites are a maze of scams, malware and dangerous content. Simply put there’s no ‘safe’ way to use them without putting yourself at risk,” said Kelvin Murray, Senior Threat Researcher at Webroot.
“The level of sophistication and detail behind the Bitcoin scam we found is a hallmark of a well thought-through and well-resourced criminal operation. These sites are purposely built to trap users into clicking on something nasty – whether that’s a scam or fake app, or serving up explicit and dangerous content.”
For seasoned web users, some of the scams found on football streaming sites will be easy enough to spot, characterized by poor spelling and grammar or promises that sound too good to be true.
However, the Webroot report provides a timely reminder that nobody is immune to a slip in concentration or lapse of judgement, so the only way to truly stay protected is to find another way to watch the footie.
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Date
28 Apr 2021Sources
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According to the researchers, the malware makes use of several carefully crafted modules that not just collect credentials, but also give remote access to the threat actors.
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“The sneaky nature of FontOnLake’s tools in combination with advanced design and low prevalence suggest that they are used in targeted attacks,” believes Vladislav Hrčka, malware analyst and reverse engineer at ESET.
Trojanized utilities
Hrčka notes that all the malware disguises itself inside trojanized versions of standard Linux utilities, including cat, kill, and sshd. In fact, one of the samples the researchers analyzed was created specifically for CentOS and Debian.
However, the exact mechanism employed by the threat actors to replace the original utilities with the malicious ones remains a mystery.
Analyzing the malware, the researchers note that the samples contained three custom backdoors written in C++, which gave remote access to the infected machines to the operators of the malware.
The location of the Command and Control (C2) server and the countries from which the samples were uploaded indicate that the attackers were after targets based in Southeast Asia.
“Following our discovery while finalizing our white paper on this topic, vendors such as Tencent Security Response Center, Avast and Lacework Labs published their research on what appears to be the same malware,” notes Hrčka, adding that ESET’s products can flag all the components of the malware.
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