The Facebook page shown below represents one example.įigure 1: Fraudulent Facebook Account Promising a Free Movie - but Delivering Adware Many Dark Side accounts revolve around offers for a free movie ahead of the December 18 release, but instead contain posts that lead to adware, spam scams, and other suspicious links. On the Dark Side are over 50 suspicious accounts (more than 5% of all accounts) with a more nefarious purpose. On the Light Side are hundreds of fan pages, reviews, communities and even authorized but unverified brand pages. The rest are a mix of the Social Force – both light and dark. Of these accounts, only five percent (53 total) are verified authentic by Facebook and Twitter. The break down by social network is shown in Figure 1 to the right. We started by scanning Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram using the Star Wars brand and found a whopping 985 accounts.
The Star Wars Universe – Both Sides of the Force Sure enough, the bad guys could not resist the opportunity to profit from one of the most popular movie brands in history. and major movie openings like Star Wars! We investigated the universe of social media accounts linked to Star Wars as well as the content posted to the main verified Star Wars social accounts during the weeks leading up to the opening. The same phenomena extends to current events like the World Series, the Super Bowl, natural disasters, holidays…. A single phishing or scam lure posted to a big brand can reach ten thousand potential victims. We see it all the time in association with large brands. Hackers, spammers and scam artists see social media as an opportunity to easily distribute their wares to massive audiences.
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