Cybercriminals distribute malware disguised as textbooks and essays that downloaded from pirated websites.
The costs of materials posted by the university are high. which leads students to look for a free or low-cost alternative’s online.
Taking this as an advantage, malicious hackers post malicious content among the study materials and advertise them for free.
Malware as textbooks and essays
The malware found to be distributed as a school- and student-related filenames that are posted for free access.
According to the Kaspersky report, 233,000 attacks by malware disguised as malicious essays and 122,000 attacks by masked ass textbooks. Over 30,000 users tried to open these files.
“English textbooks hiding malware were most popular among K-12 students with 2,080 attempted downloads. Math textbooks were the next most common, nearly infecting the computers of 1,213 students. Literature closes out the top three most dangerous subjects with 870 potential victims.”
Cybercriminals also target less popular subjects ass textbooks in the natural sciences and foreign languages at both the K-12 and college levels.
Here is the list of top four malware distributed as textbook and essays.
MediaGet downloader – While clicking on download buttons, MediaGet downloader gets downloaded instead of the document that you are looking for.
WinLNK.Agent – hide in archives of textbooks and essays that you are looking for.
Win32.Agent – Disguised as a textbook or an essay in DOC, DOCX or PDF format.
Stalk worm – Distributed via malicious contents and essays.
The cost of textbooks force the students to look for an alternative, according to a study, “students took fewer courses because of textbooks cost.”
Mitigations
- Pay alert to the files that you are downloading.
- Use updated versions of operating systems and other software.
- Use a reputable Antivirus program.
- Check the Integrity of the website before downloading.
- Inspect the download URL’s
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