A recent investigation conducted by Digital Citizens Alliance and brand protection firm White Bullet has found that sites containing pirated movies, and potentially malware, poses a risk for enterprises and work from home employees. The investigation found that most pirate sites actually generate a substantial portion of their revenues by infecting devices with malware. The ads containing malware are often served as pop-ups or pop-under advertisements on the user’s screen and typically pretend to be antivirus software notification. The sites attempt to lure the user into clicking on the malware-infected ads by conveying urgency or pretending to be security software.
Cybersecurity researchers have stated that as more and more employees seem to be transitioning to work-from-home environments on select weekdays or permanently, risks like these will become more important. What happens on a consumer device is easily spread onto other enterprise environments as well. Oftentimes, work-from-home employees are using inadequate networks with poor security and unmanaged devices, which could lead to them being vulnerable to attacks such as this one.
Read More: Malware on Pirated Content Sites a Major WFH Risk for Enterprises