Microsoft, the Technology Giant of America has issued a warning to online users against downloading movies from random websites as it exposes them to cyber threats and hackers.
Explaining a bit about the issue through its ‘Security Intelligence Account’, the Windows OS offering company says that online streaming websites can prove as lurking traps where users might end up downloading malicious payloads while downloading movies.
As Contagion, and John Wick 3 have proved as the most downloaded movies in this COVID 19 Lockdown situation, Microsoft has issued a cyber alert against downloading files with names such as Contagio-1080p, John_wick_3_Parabellum, Punales_por_la_espalda_BluRay_1080p, and La_hija_de_un_ladron and Lo-dejo_cuando_quiera.
Going forward on a technical note, hackers are seen inducing .zip files into the movie torrent sites. And as soon as the victim clicks on the pirated movie link, the malicious payload also downloads itself and then starts showing its nature such as injecting coin-mining code into the machine’s memory. And once it is done, then it starts exhibiting other features that take place behind the user’s knowledge- consuming CPU, data bandwidth, and battery power.
Microsoft Security Intelligence team says that such kind of campaigns started in Spain and then spread to some South American countries by Jan’2020. Now, from Feb 2020 most of these attacks are also being observed in some developed countries like North America, UK, Paris, and Australia.
Note- Microsoft Security Intelligence is known to analyze over 6.5 trillion security signals on a daily note to get an insight over the latest trends prevailing in the Cybersecurity landscape. And in its latest finding, it has found that hackers are seen mining cryptocurrency on systems owned by users without their knowledge.
