On this year’Äôs naughty list…
- Discounts, coupons and special offers are used by malware authors to entice users into clicking malicious links
- Advertisements placed on high-trafficked websites such as Twitter and Facebook are sometimes used as triggers for malware downloads
- The holiday seasons sets most users into a ’Äúgiving mood’Äù, making the holidays the perfect time for scammers and malware authors to carry out their schemes
- E-cards are often used by spammers and malware authors as a decoy for users to click malicious links. This type of attack usually takes advantage of holiday seasons, when users are likely to send out e-cards
- Clicking the link or opening the attachment then leads to malware being downloaded into the affected system
- Query results for certain strings are rigged with a malicious script that leads to various payloads
- In certain cases, malware authors bank on different seasons in choosing which strings will yield the malicious results
- Shopping rewards such as gift cards or cash may be used to lure users into participating in a survey
- What the user does not know is that the survey page is actually a phishing site and that it is part of a plot to steal confidential information