Malware hides behind top music artist names

guest · Jan 29, 2020

Criminals use award-winning artist names and song titles to spread malicious files
Billie Eilish sweeps Grammys, but Taylor Swift leads with most malware files
January 29, 2020
https://www.scmagazine.com/home/sec...t-taylor-swift-leads-with-most-malware-files/

Researchers at Kaspersky looked at 14 musical artists who were nominated this year for a major Grammy award and determined that in 2019 there was a 39 percent year-over-year jump in attempts to download or execute malicious files disguised as content related to these 14 talented individuals.

In a press release today, Kaspersky said it uncovered 30,982 unique malicious files that invoked the following 14 artists’ names or song titles: [...]
Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande and Post Malone – in that order – were the three artists whose names were most commonly used by malicious files in 2019. Collectively, the three performers claimed roughly 55 percent of the detected files. However, for Swift and Grande this still represented a decrease in malware borrowing their names, when compared to 2018.

The artist that saw the biggest increase in year-over-year malware activity was actually Billie Eilish [...] The number of unique, malicious files that Kaspersky observed with the teenage sensation’s name jumped from 221 in 2018 to 1,556. And the number of users monitored by Kaspersky who downloaded such malicious file climbed from 254 to 2,171.
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“Cybercriminals understand what is popular and always strive to capitalize on that,” said Anton Ivanov, Kaspersky security analyst, in the release. “Music, alongside TV shows, is one of the most popular types of entertainment and, as a result, an attractive means to spread malware, which criminals readily use. [...]”
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Kaspersky: Malware hides behind top music artist names

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