Having been forced to delay the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games, the event kicked off last week and, wouldn’t you know it, scammers are using the games as bait.
“Cybercriminals always use popular sports events as bait for their attacks. This year, the Olympics is being held without spectators – thus, we do not expect a big number of related attacks. Still, we observe that fraudsters have no limit when it comes to creating new ways to take advantage,” explains security expert at Kaspersky, Olga Svistiunova.
The cybersecurity firm has spotted a number of scams already but it has highlighted five that you might want to be aware of so that you can avoid them.
Live streams that smell phishy
Here in South Africa in order to stream the Olympics you need to do so through DStv Now or Showmax Pro.
Of course there are other, less legitimate ways to stream the Olympics but opting for those solutions may just be phishing operations.
“Some of them [streaming scams] ask for people to register before watching. Usually in such phishing pages, once a user enters their credentials, they might be redirected to a page that distributes different malicious files. Besides having malware installed on their device through such files, users sent their identifying information to untrustworthy hands. After that, scammers may start using such data for bad purposes or sell it in the Dark Web,” explains Kaspersky.
This would also be a good time to highlight why you should use unique passwords as often as possible. Should you fall victim to one of these websites and use a password you’ve used elsewhere to register, well, then the criminals have access to that account as well.
Fake tickets
As far as scams on this list go – this has to be the bravest.
One would think that with a global pandemic on the go, everybody would assume the Olympics wouldn’t have spectators. Sadly that isn’t the case and scammers are offering up tickets to the event which are of course, fake.
Kaspersky didn’t share whether anybody has fallen for this scam but it did say that it had discovered pages offering refunds for already purchased tickets which are also scams.
“We’re the ‘Lympics, trust us”
Imitation is a rather popular attack technique in cybercrime and as such it shouldn’t be surprising that attackers are impersonating Olympic entities.
The goal of these impersonators appears to be phishing and data collection.
“Analysing discovered pages, Kaspersky experts also found examples of phishing pages disguised as official Olympic ones such as a page pretending to be an official website for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and a page mimicking International Olympic Committee. The last one, for instance, collects users’ MS Services credentials,” the cybersecurity firm explains.
You’ve won! Just pay delivery
With the winning spirit in the air, some scammers are hoping you’ll test your luck and win some prizes. There are of course, no prizes as scammers will inform everybody that visits their website that they have won a prize. All winners need to do is pay for delivery. Needless to say, the only winners are the scammers who get the delivery fee and never send the prize.
Olympic Games Official Token
Why go through the labour of planning a pump and dump scheme when you can just use the Olympics to get people pumping money into your fake token?
That’s what scammers are doing according to Kaspersky which discovered the Olympic Games Official Token. The token claims to financially support sports professionals around the world who are in need but of course that isn’t what is happening and it’s a fake.
There are always dangers online but during massive global events such as the Olympic games, criminals push their luck even more.
[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]
