Cybercriminals Favor Jessica Biel as Malware Bait
Download Cybercriminals Favor Jessica Biel as Malware Bait at High Speed
Actress Jessica Biel has become the most dangerous celebrity on the Web, with one in five searchers likely to land at a malware site. McAfee said Biel toppled Brad Pitt as cybercriminals track the most popular celebrities. President Obama and his wife ranked low in risk, but Ken Dunham of iSIGHT said the Web has become more dangerous.
Move over, Brad Pitt. Actress Jessica Biel has officially overtaken you as the most dangerous celebrity to search for in cyberspace, according to Internet security company McAfee. McAfee's third annual research report into Hollywood stars and pop culture's favored people offers insights into the riskiest celebrities on the Web.
Fans searching for "Jessica Biel" or "Jessica Biel downloads," "Jessica Biel wallpaper," "Jessica Biel screen savers," "Jessica Biel photos," and "Jessica Biel videos" have a one in five chance of landing at a Web site that has tested positive for online threats such as spyware, adware, spam, phishing, viruses and other malware. McAfee's conclusion: Searching for the latest celebrity news and downloads can cause serious damage to personal computers.
"Cybercriminals are star watchers, too -- they latch onto popular celebrities to encourage the download of malicious software in disguise," said Jeff Green, senior vice president of McAfee Avert Labs. "Consumers' obsession with celebrity news and culture is harmless in theory, but one bad download can cause a lot of damage to a computer."
Star-Watching Crooks
McAfee noted that cybercriminals use celebrities' names and images, like Kim Kardashian and Rihanna, every day to lure surfers searching for the latest stories, screen savers, and ringtones to sites offering free downloads laden with malware. Beyond Biel, Beyoncé ranked high on the list. The pop-music phenom held on to her second-place position, setting a McAfee record as the overall most frequent, highly ranked celebrity in the top five.
In other findings, young Hollywood starlets Miley Cyrus, Ashley Tisdale, and Lindsay Lohan overtook Heidi Montag and Jessica Alba, who appeared on last year's list. These young celebs also ranked higher than other young personalities, including Twilight stars Robert Pattinson (30) and Kristen Stewart (20), the Jonas Brothers (23), Taylor Swift (16), Lauren Conrad (25), Vanessa Hudgens (17), and Zac Efron (21).
Meanwhile, Megan Fox and Angelina Jolie tied as the eighth most dangerous celebrities on the Web. Newlyweds Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen appeared nearly even in the fourth and sixth positions, respectively. McAfee said this finding proves that hackers target those who are most in the headlines.
McAfee researchers were surprised by one finding: The Obamas are not among the riskiest public figures to search. President Barack (34) and Michelle Obama (39) ranked in the bottom third of this year's results.
More Dangerous
According to Ken Dunham, director of global response for iSIGHT Partners, trends have changed over the past five years. The evolving dynamics of the Web, complete with social networking and legitimate use of peer-to-peer networks, has made it more dangerous. Indeed, Dunham said the Web threat is so pervasive that the risk factor has gone up notably compared to legitimate searches of just a few years ago.
"There was a day when if you got a Trojan surfing a peer-to-peer network, I could say, 'Shame on you, what were you looking for?' because most of the Trojans were connected to someone looking for illegal or immoral things online, like cracked software or pornography," Dunham said.
"Today, a person can be doing legitimate business activity from a business computer and get infected. The exposure to potentially malicious content Relevant Products/Services is significantly greater than it was five years ago. It makes it very difficult to tell what is legitimate and what isn't legitimate, even for an expert."
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kashinomi / 03.10.2009
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