The alarming Kaspersky report: nine times more attacks aiming connected objects than in 2018

The alarming Kaspersky report: nine times more attacks aiming connected objects than in 2018
Image source: TheDigitalArtist via Pixabay

Last October 15, Kaspersky, the antivirus software company, published an edifying report about the volume of cyberattacks directly aiming connected objects.

Although the industry expected that this new generation of objects would be directly targeted by cyberattacks, the increase in the cyberattacks number is alarming and lets easily imagine the security flaws that the connected objects present.

According to the estimation presented by Kaspersky, between the beginning of 2018 until mid-2019, the attacks would have reached the record of 105 million, i.e. nine times more than the previous year as a whole.

In order to conduct this research, Kaspersky used the trap technique by deploying more than 50 honeypots across the world. A Honeypot is a program that imitates the connected objects’ signature specifically created to attract cybercriminals. It was then possible to detect attacks from pirates that fell into the trap set for them. According to Kaspersky, during this experience, more than 20 000 sessions would have been infected every 15 minutes. 105 million attacks from 276 000 unique IP addresses have then been detected (compared to 12 million in 2018).

Furthermore, the report indicates that both in 2018 and 2019, China and Brazil are vying for the top position of the countries that served as the origin of the attacks launched.

The main malwares that use the security flaws of connected objects are well known (Mirai for example) and identified.

While we are aware that IoT is a privileged playground for pirates, the first security measures are far from being systematically applied. It’s essential for example to change the password installed by default for each connected devices’ purchase. For reminder, although technologies of cyber malice are indeed more and more sophisticated, the first gateway for pirates remains the users’ lack of vigilance.

Satori Botnet: The hacker facing up to 10 years imprisonment did not act alone

Satori botnet
Image source: TheDigitalArtist via Pixabay

We now know more about the cyberpirate, Nexus Zeta, whose real name is Kenneth Currin Schuchman, who distinguished himself with the creation of the Satori botnet.

Pleading guilty to the charges regarding Satori botnet creation, his confessions describe the implementation of this attack using IoT flaws.

For reminder, a botnet is a set of infected computers remotely controlled by a cybercriminal. The machines that belong to a botnet are often called “bots” or “zombies”. The aim: to spread a malware or a virus to the greatest number of machines possible.

The hacker Nexus Zeta did not act alone but worked together with two other cybercriminals: Vamp who served as the primary developer/coder of Satori and Drake who managed the botnet sales.

The Satori botnet was created based on the public code of the Mirai IoT malware.

For reminder, in 2016, Mirai was the source of one of the biggest DDoS ever seen in 2016, targeting in particular the American provider DYN. The functioning is based on the permanent research on the Internet, of IP addresses corresponding to connected objects (IoT). Once the vulnerable connected objects identified, Mirai connects to them to install the malware.

If the Satori botnet mainly attacked the devices running with factory-set or easy to guess passwords, in its first month of deployment, it has infected over 100 000 devices.

Between 2017 and 2018, the three hackers continue to develop Satori, which they will rename Okiru and Masuta. The botnet went as far as to infect over 700 000 devices.

Officially accused by the American authorities, Kenneth Currin Schuchman is free until his trial. However, he breaks the pre-trial release conditions by accessing the Internet and developing a new botnet. It is in October 2018 that he is this time arrested and jailed. Pleading guilty, he’s facing up to ten years in prison and a fine of 250 000 dollars.

50 years after Arpanet, the Internet’s ancestor

Arpanet - Internet’s ancestor - Nameshield Blog
Image source: geralt via Pixabay

On October 29, 1969 UCLA sends the very first e-message to Stanford Research Institute through Arpanet network (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) laying the foundation for today’s networked world.

Arpanet, the Internet’s precursor 

Arpanet is the first data transfer network developed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) which belonged to the U.S. Defense Department.

The first Arpanet node was set up at UCLA on August 30, 1969, the second node, at the Stanford Research Institute, was set up on October 1st 1969. The first message was sent between the two institutions on October 29 1969 by the UCLA computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock who wished to send the word “login” but the system crashed so only two letters, “l” and “o”, were transmitted, the complete word will only be transmitted 1 hour later.

Arpanet connected some universities and research institutes: first, UCLA and Stanford Research Institute, followed by UC Santa Barbara and the University of Utah. At the end of 1969, Arpanet counted 4 nodes, in 1971, 23 nodes were created and 111 nodes in 1977.

In 1983, Arpanet has been divided in two networks: one military, the MILnet (Military Network) and the other academic, the NSFnet.

On January 1st 1983, the name “Internet” already in use to define all of Arpanet, became official.

World Wide Web turns 30 years old

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher working for the CERN, proposed a hypertext system working on the Internet. This system was originally developed for scientists working in universities and institutes around the world, so they could instantly share information. His vision of universal connectivity became the World Wide Web, which sent Internet usage skyrocketing.

In 1993, Mosaic, the first popular web browser was created by Marc Andreessen and Eric J.Bina, two students of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) of the University of Illinois. It was not the first graphical web browser but Mosaic was particularly fast and allowed the users to display images inside web pages instead of displaying images in a separate window, which has given it some popularity and contributed to increase the World Wide Web’s popularity.

Internet Protocol – From IPv4 to IPv6

The Internet Protocol (IP) is a set of communication protocols of IT networks developed to be used on the Internet. IP protocols allow a unique addressing service for all connected devices.

IPv4 the first major version was invented in the 70’s and introduced to the public in 1981. It is still the dominant protocol of the Internet today. Twenty years ago, the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) started predicting the depletion of IPv4 addresses and began working to create a new version of the Internet Protocol: IPv6.

IPv4 uses a 32-bit addressing scheme to support 4.3 billion devices, while IPv6 possesses a much larger address space. Indeed, IPv6 uses a 128-bit address allowing 3.4 x 1038 possible addresses.

DNS – Domain Name System

At the request of the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Defense Department, the DNS (Domain Name System) was invented in 1983 by Jon Postel and Paul Mockapetris, in order to associate complex IP addresses with humanly understandable and easy-to-remember names. Thus a logical address, the domain name, is associated to a physical address, the IP address. The domain name and IP address are unique.

In 1998, is created ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the regulatory authority of the Internet. Its main purpose is to allocate the Internet protocol addresses spaces, to attribute the protocol identifier (IP), to manage the domain name system of top level for generic codes (gTLD), to assign the country codes (ccTLD), and to carry out the functions of the root servers’ system management.

With 351.8 million domain names registrations in the first quarter of 2019, domain names registrations continue to climb, but with the increase of the number of threats aiming the DNS at the same time.

The emergence of cyber threats

Considered as one of the first cyberattacks and certainly the first to attract the media’s attention, the Morris Worm was launched in 1988 by a student of the Cornell University, Robert Tappan Morris. Originally, the malware developed by the student didn’t have for purpose to cause damage but simply to estimate the extent of the Internet. However this worm affected about 60 000 computers estimated connected to the Internet and the cost of the damages was about 100 000 to 10 million dollars. This event marks the turning point in the field of online security.

Today, cyberattacks are abundant, frequent and more and more sophisticated. The evolution of techniques and the arrival of new technologies make cyberattacks increasingly complex and offer new opportunities to attackers.

There are various types of cyberattack like attacks aiming the DNS: DDoS, DNS cache poisoning, DNS spoofing, Man in the Middle… (In 2019, according to IDC – International Data Corporation, 82% of companies worldwide have faced a DNS attack over the past year) or attacks directly aiming users and having for purpose to obtain confidential information to steal an identity (phishing).

The consequences for victimized companies can be significant. For example, today the cost of a data breach is 3.92 million dollars on average according to IBM Security, this cost has risen 12% over the past five years.

An IP traffic estimated in 2022 more important than the one generated from 1984 to 2016

With more than 5 billion Google searches made every day, e-commerce continuing to thrive, social media growing in popularity and the increasing number of connected objects, the traffic volume on the Internet has risen considerably.

Indeed, in 1974, daily traffic on the Internet surpassed 3 million packets per day. According to a Cisco’s research in 2017, the global IP traffic reached 122 exabytes per month, the company estimates that this volume should reach 396 exabytes by 2022.

The size and complexity of the Internet continues to grow in ways that many could not have imagined. Since we first started the VNI Forecast in 2005, traffic has increased 56-fold, amassing a 36% CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) with more people, devices and applications accessing IP networks” said Jonathan Davidson, senior vice president and general manager of Service Provider Business at Cisco.

Today, 50 years after the birth of the Internet’s ancestor, Arpanet, there are more Internet connected devices than people in the world. In 2022, the web users will represent 60% of the world’s population and more than 28 billion devices will connect to the Internet.

Soon a maximum duration of one year for SSL certificates?

Soon a maximum duration of one year for SSL/TLS certificates?

What is happening?

The industry actors plan to reduce the lifetime of SSL/TLS certificates, allowing the HTTPS display in browsers, to 13 months, i.e. almost half of the present lifetime of 27 months, in order to improve security.

Google through the CA/Browser Forum has indeed proposed this modification, approved by Apple and a Certification Authority, making it eligible to vote. During the next CA/B Forum meetings, if the vote is accepted, the modification of the requirements will come into effect in March 2020. Any certificate issued after the entry into force date will have to respect the requirements of the shortened validity period.

The aim for this reduction is to complicate things for cyber attackers by reducing the duration of the use of the potentially stolen certificates. It could also force companies to use the most recent and the most secured available encrypting algorithms.

If the vote fails, it’s not to be excluded that browsers supporting this requirement, unilaterally implement it in their root program, thus forcing the change to the Certification Authorities. It’s likely that this could be the case, this change follows Google’s precedent initiative that aimed to reduce the lifespan from three years to two years in 2018, period during which Google already wished to reduce it to 13 months or even less.

Who is impacted?

The changes proposed by Google would have an impact on all the users of TLS certificates of public trust, regardless of the Certification Authority that issued the certificate. If the vote passes, all certificates issued or reissued after March 2020 will have a maximum validity of 13 months. The companies using certificates with a validity period superior to 13 months will be encouraged to reconsider their systems and evaluate the impact of the proposed modifications on their implementation and their use.

The TLS certificates issued before March 2020 with a validity period superior to 13 months will stay operational. The public non-TLS certificate, for the code signing, the TLS private code and clients’ certificates, etc. are not concerned.  It will not be necessary to revoke an existing certificate following the implementation of the new standard. The reduction will have to be applied during the renewal.

What do the market players think about this?

It would be a global change for the industry with impacts on all the Certification Authorities. They view this proposition in a negative light. We can see an economic interest above all, but not solely…

The main argument is that the market is not ready in terms of automation system of orders and certificates implementations. Indeed, there would be more human interventions with the risks associated with poor handling, or simply a higher risk of forgetting a certificate renewal.

For Certification Authorities, reducing the certificates’ lifespan to such a short term mainly presents an increase of the human costs related to the certificate portfolio management. If they are not fundamentally against this decision, they would particularly like more time to study what users and companies think.

The position of browsers makers

Be it Google or Mozilla, the spearheads of the native HTTPS massive adoption for all websites and the supporters of the Let’sEncrypt initiative, what is important is the encrypting of all web traffic. A reduction of the certificates lifespan reduces the risk of certificates theft on a long period and encourages the massive adoption of automated management systems. For these two actors, an ideal world would have certificate of maximum 3 months. If they are attentive to the market as to not impose their views too quickly, it is more than likely that in the long term the certificates’ lifespan will continue to decrease.

Nameshield’s opinion 

The market continues its evolution towards shorter and shorter certificates’ validity, as a continual decrease of the authentication levels and consequently a need for management automated solutions that will increase. We will align on these requirements and advise our customers to prepare themselves for this reduction which will, without a doubt, arrive. Our Certification Authorities partners will also follow this evolution and will allow to provide all systems of required permanent inventory and automation.

To be heard

The CA/Browser Forum accepts comments of external participants and all discussions are public. You can directly enter your comments to the Forum distribution list:  https://cabforum.org/working-groups/ (at the bottom of the page). Nameshield is in contact with CA/Browser Forum participants and will inform you of the future decisions.

NBA: Phishing doesn’t spare sports institutions

NBA: Phishing doesn’t spare sports institutions
Image source: mohamed_hassan via Pixabay

On last May 10th, in a press release, the Pacers Sports & Entertainment (PSE) organization, owner of the NBA’s basketball team the Indiana Pacers, revealed that they were the victim of a sophisticated phishing attack at the end of 2018.

For reminder, phishing is a technique used to obtain personal information in order to commit an identity theft.  This is a «social engineering» technique, i.e. consisting in exploiting not an IT flaw but a «human flaw» by deceiving web users through an e-mail seemingly coming from a trustworthy company, typically a bank or a business website.

Pacers Sports & Entertainment victim of a phishing attack

At the end of 2018, the company PSE has then been the target of a phishing emails campaign resulting in the unauthorized access to emails containing personal information related to a limited number of individuals.

This cyberattack affected a limited number of individuals but the amount of the stolen information is important: name, address, date of birth, passport number, driver’s license, state identification number, account number, credit/debit card number, digital signature, username and password and for some individuals, the Social Security number.

The American company has quickly implemented measures to secure the affected email accounts and investigate the incident with the assistance of forensic experts. This investigation then revealed that the hackers had access to the accounts of a limited number of persons between October 15th and December 4th, 2018. The press release doesn’t give any details regarding the identity of the targeted persons.

PSE individually notified each victim whose information has been stolen and assures that “to date, PSE has no evidence of actual or attempted misuse of any personal information”. The organization offered to the victims of the cyberattack an access to credit monitoring and identity protection services at no cost.

Some simple rules against phishing

Phishing attacks are increasing. Above all, they are becoming more and more sophisticated, and target all kinds of industries. Each and every one of us must be extra vigilant.

Lastly, for reminder, here are some simple rules to protect yourself against phishing attempts:

  • Do not reply when someone asks for your personal data by email;
  • Do not ever open an attachment from an unknown sender, or from one who is not entirely trustworthy;
  • Check the links by hovering the cursor over them (without clicking) to ensure that they link to trustworthy websites;
  • Do not trust the name of the mail’s sender. If there is any doubt, contact the sender through another method.

The Nameshield SSL interface has had a complete makeover

The Nameshield SSL interface has had a complete makeover

More user-friendly, more comprehensive, more attractive… our brand new and improved Nameshield SSL interface is being launched on Thursday, June 13th allowing you to manage all of your certificates.

You will now have access to key metrics on your certificate portfolio, to different certificate lookup views (such as complete portfolio, detailed overview, certificates nearing expiry, pending orders, expired or revoked certificates), to an Organization and Contact management tool and a redesigned ordering system.

Lastly, a decision support tool has been included in the interface to help you choose the certificate that’s right for your needs.

The certificate range has been updated to cover all types of certificates, SSL, RGS, Code Signing, Individual certificates and with all levels of authentication.

The SSL team remains at your disposal for a demonstration and a complete user guide is available covering all possible operations and actions.

Contact us directly at certificates@nameshield.net.

Europe decides to apply sanctions to transboundary cybercriminals

Europe decides to apply sanctions to transboundary cybercriminals
Image source: GregMontani via Pixabay

On Friday May 17th, 2019, the Council of Ministers of the European Union presented the creation of a blacklist identifying the perpetrators of cybercrimes located outside the EU.

Thus this is a new legal context which has been validated by the EU in order to try to reduce the continuously growing cyberattacks’ number. Now, the EU will indeed be able to sanction individuals or entities involved in the cyberattacks carried out from outside the EU.

Europe seeks through this measure to protect as far as possible the most critical infrastructures, regarding electoral or health systems for example, from cybercriminals, by abolishing the impunity which the international hackers seemingly enjoyed.

If there is no name on this famous list today, the situation could change soon.

Recently, the British Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt declared that “for too long now, hostile actors have been threatening the EU’s security through disrupting critical infrastructure, attempting to undermine democracy and stealing commercial secrets and money running to billions of Euros. Hence, this decision was necessary.”

It’s now very clear that the cyberattacks carried out by nations, against nations or entities, tend to multiply. It’s important to note that these sanctions can be retroactive. To this day, the sanctions are not clearly defined: travel bans and assets freeze against those we know have been responsible for these actions? Several options are presently being studied.

Cyberattack: G7 and France organize a cyberattack simulation in the finance industry

Cyberattack: G7 and France organize a cyberattack simulation in the finance industry
Image source : TheDigitalArtist via Pixabay

Faced with the upsurge and the continually increasing strength of cyberattacks, a simulation exercise of a cyberattack in the finance industry will be organized by the members of the G7, the world’s major economic powers.

In the French presidency context, France will be the one that will run this test in which 24 financial authorities of the 7 members of the G7 will participate during 3 days.

Today it is no secret that the banking sector is one of the most targeted by cybercriminals [according to an IBM’s research, 19% of the attacks would aim banking institutions].

Thus, for the first time, the G7 countries organize a cyberattack cross-border simulation in early June 2019. This test is organized by the Banque de France (the central bank of France) and proposes the following scenario: a malware will be injected in a technical component widely used in the financial sector.

As indicated by Bruno Le Maire, the Minister of Economy and Finance of France “cyber threats are the proof that we need more multilateralism and cooperation between our countries”.

According to this argument, this same exercise will be conducted at the same time in the other countries, giving it a specific dimension. If other exercises of this kind have indeed already been done before, particularly by the Bank of England and the European Central Bank, none of these tests was done simultaneously.

What are the results sought in this joint exercise? Firmly establishing the risks of a cyberattack’s epidemic spread, in order to be able to enhance the infrastructures security and to ensure the reactivity in case of attack and prevent a wide contagion.

The Black swan time?

IoT-  The Black swan time?
Image source: abudrian via Pixabay

The actors and utility providers invade the connected world, benefiting from the innovations that the rest of the world opportunely provides them. It wouldn’t be a problem if we didn’t live in an age where hacking a power plant became possible.

In 2015 and 2016, hackers shut down power to thousands of users in the middle of the Ukrainian winter. Since then, the American government openly admitted that foreign powers tried every day to take control of the energy grid control rooms of the United States. And this is important because we are currently connecting decades old infrastructures in an environment which is swimming with threats that it was never designed to protect against.

Engineers have not always played well with computer scientists. These disciplines are different, they are different mindsets with different aims, different cultures and of course, different technologies. Engineers can plan for accidents and failures, while cybersecurity professionals plan for attacks. There are completely different industry standards for each discipline and very few standards for the growing field of the Internet of Things (IoT), which is increasingly weaving its way into utility environments. Those two worlds are now colliding.

Much of the IT used in utilities infrastructure was previously isolated, operating without fear of the hackers, with systems built for availability and convenience, not for security. Their creators didn’t consider how a user might have to authenticate to a network to prove that they are a trusted actor. That might have been acceptable in the past, but now we have a landscape littered with outdated machines weighed down with insecure codes that are unequipped for modern IT threats. The upgrading of these systems and the security afterward, won’t solve all those security problems and replacing them entirely would be too expensive, difficult to envisage and almost utopian for many. And today, this is a real problem to connect them in an environment exposed to threats and adversaries searching for the next easy target.

Today, the world tends to connect more and more, particularly through Internet of Things (IoT), we talk about connected cars, baby monitors connected to a parent’s smartphone and doorbells informing homeowners who is at their doors, fridges, washing machines become connected… and utilities follow the trends, naturally wanting to be part of this world’s evolution towards the increasing computerisation of physical objects.

Exciting as these new innovations might sound, evidence mounts every day of the IoT’s insecurity. Whether it’s hardcoded passwords, an inability to authenticate its outward and inward connections or an inability to update, there is little argument about their security. These products are often rushed to market without a thought for this important factor.

Enterprises and governments are seizing the IoT as a way to transform the way they do business, and utilities are doing the same. Large infrastructures will increasingly be made up of IoT endpoints and sensors – able to relay information to its operators and radically improve the overall function of utilities.

Unfortunately, in the rush to innovation, eager adopters often ignore the glaring security problems that shiny new inventions often bring with them. In an industrial or utilities environment the IoT means something that is similar at a descriptive level, but radically different in real-world impact. A connected doll is one thing, a connected power plant is another entirely!

The risks on utilities are real. There are plenty of examples. Stuxnet, the virus which destroyed the Iranian nuclear program is just one. The aforementioned attacks on the Ukrainian power grid could be another. Furthermore Western governments, including France, now admit that foreign actors are attempting to hack their utilities on a daily basis.

But if this is such a big problem, you might ask, then why hasn’t it happened more often? Why haven’t we heard about such potentially devastating attacks even more? Well, the fact is that many won’t know they’ve already been hacked. Many organizations go for weeks, months and often years without realizing that an attacker has been lurking within their systems. The Ponemon Institute has found that the average time between an organization being breached and the discovery of that fact is 191 days, nearly half a year. This is especially true if one of those aged legacy systems has no way of telling what is anomalous. Others may just hide their breach, as many organizations do. Such attacks are often embarrassing, especially with the regulatory implications and public backlash that a cyberattack on a utility brings with it.

Furthermore, most attacks are often not catastrophic events. They are commonly attempts to gain data or access to a critical system. For most, that’s a valuable enough goal to pursue. Edging into the more destructive possibilities of such an attack would essentially be an act of war and not many cybercriminals want to earn the attention – or the ire – of a nation state.

The theory of the black swan – theorized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb:  a situation that is hard to predict and seems wildly unlikely, but has apocalyptic implications – fits perfectly here. We don’t know when, how or if such an event might happen but we had better start preparing for it. Even if the likelihood of such an event is small, the cost of waiting and not preparing for it will be much higher. The IoT market, particularly in the utilities sector need to start preparing for that black swan.

Public Key Infrastructures (PKI) using certificates will allow utilities to overcome many of these threats, providing unparalleled trust for an often hard to manage network. It’s been built on interoperable and standardized protocols, which have been protecting web-connected systems for decades. It offers the same for the IoT.

PKIs are highly scalable, making them a great fit for industrial environments and utilities. The manner in which many utilities will be seizing hold of the IoT is through the millions of sensors that will feed data back to operators and streamline day-to-day operations, making utilities more efficient. The sheer number of those connections and the richness of the data flowing through them make them hard to manage, hard to monitor and hard to secure.

A PKI ecosystem can secure the connections between devices, the systems and those that use them. The same goes for older systems, which have been designed for availability and convenience, but not for the possibility of attack. Users, devices and systems will also be able to mutually authenticate between each other, ensuring that behind each side of a transaction is a trusted party.

The data that is constantly travelling back and forth over those networks is encrypted under PKI using the latest cryptography. Attackers that want to steal that data will find that their ill-gotten gains are useless when they realize they can’t decrypt it.

Further ensuring the integrity of that data is code signing. When devices need to update over the air, code signing lets you know that the author of the updates is who they say they are and that their code hasn’t been insecurely tampered with since they wrote it. Secure boot will also prevent unauthorized code from loading when a device starts up. PKI will only allow secure, trusted code to run on a device, hamstringing hackers and ensuring the data integrity that utilities require.

The possibilities of an attack on a utility can sometimes seem beyond the pale. Just a few years ago a hack on a power grid seemed almost impossible. Today, news of IoT vulnerabilities regularly fills headlines around the world. The full destructive implications of this new situation have yet to be fully realized, but just because all we see are white swans, it doesn’t mean a black one isn’t on its way.

Users will soon start demanding these security provisions from companies. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has recently fined a utility company that was found guilty of 127 different security violations $10 million. The company wasn’t named, but pressure groups have recently mounted a campaign, filing a petition with FERC to publicly name and shame it. Moreover, with the advent of the General Data Protection Regulation and the NIS directive last year, utilities now have to look a lot closer at the way they protect their data. All over the world, governments are looking at how to secure the IoT, especially when it comes to the physical safety risks involved. Utilities security matters because utilities hold a critical role in the functioning of society. It is just as important that they be dragged into the 21st century, as they are protected from it. PKIs can offer a way to do just that.

Mike Ahmadi, DigiCert VP of Industrial IoT Security, works closely with automotive, industrial control and healthcare industry standards bodies, leading device manufacturers and enterprises to advance cybersecurity best practices and solutions to protecting against evolving threats.

This article on the publication of Mike Ahmadi, is from an article of Intersec website.

Game of Thrones: The return of the [MALWARES] white walkers by dozens

Game of Thrones: The return of the [MALWARES] white walkers by dozens
Image source: Irfan Rafiq via Pexels

As with each event where massive interest is expected, the launch of the final season of Game of Thrones is a golden opportunity for pirates.

According to a Kaspersky’ study, this series would be the favorite of the cybercriminals. It represented 17% of the infected contents last year, i.e. 20 934 web users! According to this same study, the most targeted episodes are logically the first and last episodes of the season.

For if the fans are many in France, without subscription, the only solution to watch the so awaited episodes is illegal downloading on torrent websites.

It is through this means that the cybercriminals infect the unsuspecting web users’ computers. First warning, do not install programs at the request of the torrent websites, they can contain a malware!

Indeed, two kinds of frauds are principally used:

  • Malwares: the malicious software are launched on torrent websites used by the fans of the series to access to the watching of the precious episodes.
  • Phishing: many phishing attempts have been counted, the pirates use the official image of Game of Thrones to try to retrieves your personal data.

This season, the cybercriminals are almost as creative as the scriptwriters of the successful series: many and various fake contests allow these hackers to collect email addresses and other bank details.

Counterfeiting is also in the game, with an observed increase of websites proposing many so-called “official” products but being nothing more than counterfeits.

Thus, Nameshield recommends to the fans to be highly vigilant!

For reminder, here are the basic principles to respect in order to serenely navigate and not be trapped by unscrupulous hackers:

  • Do not download any plugin of suspicious origin
  • Properly analyze the URLs before any purchase
  • Check the presence of the famous HTTPS
  • Check that the final address corresponds to the searched website

As always on the web, an extra vigilance is needed, because if spring wins our regions, don’t forget that on the web, winter is coming…