Cybercriminals Exploit March Madness Frenzy

With March Madness into the sweet sixteen round and basketball fever reaching its peak, online malicious activities appear to have increased, too, reports Infosecurity. The last 15 days of the annual NCAA basketball tournament has seen heightened malicious activity involving phishing pages, adware downloads and mishandling of user data.

Official statistics have described the opening weekend of this year’s NCAA tournament as the most watched in 24 years, and this popularity has spilled over into the social media like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. As a result, more and more sports enthusiasts are streaming games and unknowingly clicking on dubious links to watch their favorite matches.

Zscaler researchers say these links are redirecting viewers “to a site that installs a browser hijacker, which prompts users to install toolbars and change the homepage to search.searchliveson[.]com to continue watching the game.”

Additionally, phishing webpages are being hosted by domain-squatted addresses and login credentials created to allow sniffing attacks in order to steal user credentials and other personal information, they add.

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