Fake movie sites offering free downloads of The Rise of Skywalker could prove costly to fans
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is set to bring in $200 million (£153.6 million) in U.S. and Canadian box office receipts this weekend, according to reports. This despite some critics calling it a "bad movie and a miserable finale." Regardless of reviews, good or bad, Star Wars fans will no doubt lap up the latest movie in this incredibly successful film franchise. It's not just Disney that will be reaping the rewards of the Star Wars franchise hype; cybercriminals are already exploiting the popularity of this last installment of the current Star Wars trilogy. Kaspersky researchers have uncovered more than 30 fraudulent websites and social media profiles that are disguised as official movie accounts. Official movie accounts that promise to distribute exclusive footage of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker to fans for free. As always, when talking about the cybercriminal fraternity, free comes at a considerable cost.
Searching for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker could be a security risk
Cybercrime comes in many different forms. From launching ransomware attacks like the one that saw New Orleans declare a state of emergency, to selling stolen credit cards like the Joker’s Stash on the dark web and even taking over your computer to send sextortion emails to potential victims.
Researchers at security vendor Kaspersky, however, have been studying how cybercriminals are abusing the Star Wars franchise to launch cyber attacks. It's not exactly surprising that a blockbuster title such as Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker should attract the attention of cybercriminals. After all, movies are right up there with music as the most searched for forms of pirated entertainment. People eager to track down a free copy of the film, or even just trailers and exclusive footage, create what Kaspersky refers to as "fertile soil" for cyber-attacks. With torrent-trackers and illegal streaming platforms often hosting malicious files along with the films themselves.
Kaspersky researchers discovered more than 30 fraudulent websites and social media profiles pretending to be official movie accounts. Using domains that are as similar to the movie name or franchise as possible and crammed full of supporting content to game the search engines into thinking they are connected with the movie, these sites often appear high in Google searches. Until the real motive is discovered, reported and links to the sites removed. While there are processes in place to limit the success of such black SEO activity, plenty of frauds will still slip through the net. Fans searching for "The Rise of Skywalker watch free" are warned not to get carried away by what appears to be an official fansite. "These websites collect unwary users’ credit card data," Kaspersky said, "under the pretense of necessary registration on the portal."
Adding authenticity to drive fans to fake fansites
It's not just the websites alone that criminals rely on to fool the fans. In order to both promote these sites and add validity to them, social media accounts will often be established. These will also look as official as possible, or as fan-oriented as possible, to drive Star Wars fans to the links they distribute. Kaspersky said that it has, so far, found 83 users who have been caught by 65 malicious files disguised as copies of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. In 2019, Kaspersky said it detected a total of 285,103 attempts to infect 37,772 users seeking to watch Star Wars movies online. That's a 10% rise on the previous year.
"As attackers manage to push malicious websites and content up in the search results," Tatiana Sidorina, a security researcher at Kaspersky, said, "fans need to remain cautious at all times. We advise users to not fall for such scams and instead enjoy the end of the saga on the big screen."
Mitigating the Star Wars search security risk
If you really can't stop yourself searching for free Star Wars movie stuff, then at least try and make sure that the download file extension isn't ".exe" instead of a video format such as .avi, .mkv or .mp4. That's not a cast-iron guarantee to avoid malware; the smarter the criminal the better they will disguise the true nature of what you are downloading, but at least it's a start. Kaspersky suggests that you "confirm that the website is genuine by double-checking the format of the URL or the spelling of the company name, reading reviews about it and checking the domains’ registration data before starting downloads."
