Hey guys, Aura here with my first News thread on malwaretips.com.
We learned around a week ago that the actor Robin Williams put an end to his life in its house. Robin Williams was loved by millions of fans around the world, but also his family and friends and his death is a great loss to them, but also to the world of cinema. We all know what happens when these kind of events happens, there's always people that tries to abuse it for their personal gain and make profit out of it. This time, once again, scammers/spreaders are back at it on Facebook.
A new scam started trending on Facebook lately. This scam is a "shared article" that advertise the last video of Robin Williams, apparently taken from his phone moments before he killed himself. That article asks you to click on it to go on the website and view the video. However, like you should have guessed by now, there's no video at all. This is all just a setup put in place by scammers/hackers in order to make money out of it and also infect people with malware. Symantec, who discovered and reported the scam explains :
"There is no video. Users that click on the link to the supposed video are taken to a fake BBC News website. As with many social scams, users are required to perform actions before they can view the content. In this case, users are instructed to share the video on Facebook before watching," Symantec security response manager Satnam Narang said in a blog post.
Basically, once you get on the website, you're asked to share that video in order to see it. When you click on "Share" and you're not connected to Facebook, it asks you to connect via a pop-up window that might by a phishing attempt. Once done, the last step before being able to watch that video is to either fill a survey, or install a Facebook media plug-in. As you guessed once again, the survey is only here to be filled and give money to the scammer while the Facebook plug-in have good chances to be a malware. And in the end, you don't even have access to the video, which forces people to do the second solution (depending of if they answered the survey or installed the plugin) in hope to access it, when there's nothing in reality.
According to Symantec statistics, that scam started around 48 hours after the breaking news of the discovery of Robin Williams' body and it has been shared over 24 millions time on Facebook so far (hence the "Share this post" step before accessing the video). What makes this scam so popular is the use of "Social Engineering", a technical term that describe the manipulation of the human brain to convince them to do what another person wants without knowing what they are really doing. Social Engineering is often abused with breaking news, mostly celebrity deaths :
"Over the years, scammers have used both real and fake celebrity deaths as a way to convince users to click on links and perform actions. From Amy Winehouse and Paul Walker to the fake deaths of Miley Cyrus and Will Smith, scammers are opportunistic and always looking for ways to capitalize," Narang said.
The same happened a few weeks ago, back when the comedian and actor Tracy Morgan got into a car accident, leaving it in a critical condition in the hospital. The scammers spread an "article" saying that Tracy Morgan ended up dying of his wounds, when it was in reality false and only another scam.
Symantec recommends users to stay alert and vigilant when coming across such posts and to recommend their friends to get their system checked up for malware as soon as possible if they start sharing articles of this kind without them knowing about it.
The Better Business Bureau (BBB) also issued a warning about another scam using the death of Robin Williams, in which a video of him before his death can be accessed on a website, but requires a special media player in order to play, where that "special media player" is in fact a malware.
Inspired from the article : Sick Facebook Scammers Exploit Robin Williams' Suicide
Once again, it shows us how heartless and inhuman some hackers and scammers can be. Taking advantage of a shocking news that saddens tons of people, without counting the family and friends of the person involved in this incident in order to make profit and for their own personal gain. Please keep in mind that all these articles are fake and in the end there's no videos or articles, but just surveys and malwares that ends up putting you in trouble, and giving the scammer more money.
Stay safe and secure guys.
We learned around a week ago that the actor Robin Williams put an end to his life in its house. Robin Williams was loved by millions of fans around the world, but also his family and friends and his death is a great loss to them, but also to the world of cinema. We all know what happens when these kind of events happens, there's always people that tries to abuse it for their personal gain and make profit out of it. This time, once again, scammers/spreaders are back at it on Facebook.
A new scam started trending on Facebook lately. This scam is a "shared article" that advertise the last video of Robin Williams, apparently taken from his phone moments before he killed himself. That article asks you to click on it to go on the website and view the video. However, like you should have guessed by now, there's no video at all. This is all just a setup put in place by scammers/hackers in order to make money out of it and also infect people with malware. Symantec, who discovered and reported the scam explains :
"There is no video. Users that click on the link to the supposed video are taken to a fake BBC News website. As with many social scams, users are required to perform actions before they can view the content. In this case, users are instructed to share the video on Facebook before watching," Symantec security response manager Satnam Narang said in a blog post.
Basically, once you get on the website, you're asked to share that video in order to see it. When you click on "Share" and you're not connected to Facebook, it asks you to connect via a pop-up window that might by a phishing attempt. Once done, the last step before being able to watch that video is to either fill a survey, or install a Facebook media plug-in. As you guessed once again, the survey is only here to be filled and give money to the scammer while the Facebook plug-in have good chances to be a malware. And in the end, you don't even have access to the video, which forces people to do the second solution (depending of if they answered the survey or installed the plugin) in hope to access it, when there's nothing in reality.
According to Symantec statistics, that scam started around 48 hours after the breaking news of the discovery of Robin Williams' body and it has been shared over 24 millions time on Facebook so far (hence the "Share this post" step before accessing the video). What makes this scam so popular is the use of "Social Engineering", a technical term that describe the manipulation of the human brain to convince them to do what another person wants without knowing what they are really doing. Social Engineering is often abused with breaking news, mostly celebrity deaths :
"Over the years, scammers have used both real and fake celebrity deaths as a way to convince users to click on links and perform actions. From Amy Winehouse and Paul Walker to the fake deaths of Miley Cyrus and Will Smith, scammers are opportunistic and always looking for ways to capitalize," Narang said.
The same happened a few weeks ago, back when the comedian and actor Tracy Morgan got into a car accident, leaving it in a critical condition in the hospital. The scammers spread an "article" saying that Tracy Morgan ended up dying of his wounds, when it was in reality false and only another scam.
Symantec recommends users to stay alert and vigilant when coming across such posts and to recommend their friends to get their system checked up for malware as soon as possible if they start sharing articles of this kind without them knowing about it.
The Better Business Bureau (BBB) also issued a warning about another scam using the death of Robin Williams, in which a video of him before his death can be accessed on a website, but requires a special media player in order to play, where that "special media player" is in fact a malware.
Inspired from the article : Sick Facebook Scammers Exploit Robin Williams' Suicide
Once again, it shows us how heartless and inhuman some hackers and scammers can be. Taking advantage of a shocking news that saddens tons of people, without counting the family and friends of the person involved in this incident in order to make profit and for their own personal gain. Please keep in mind that all these articles are fake and in the end there's no videos or articles, but just surveys and malwares that ends up putting you in trouble, and giving the scammer more money.
Stay safe and secure guys.
