Porn fans who have paid to join a site will be alarmed by a new cybersecurity report issued by the anti-virus software maker Kaspersky Lab earlier this week, which reports that attempted “malware” attacks designed to detect and steal user login credentials more than tripled in 2018, compared to 2017, with upwards of 850,000 attempts discovered by Kaspersky researchers.
The total number of users targeted reached 110,000, according to the report, roughly double the number from the year before.
But the report did contain some good news for online porn surfers. As AVN.com reported, more than a million users in 2017 contracted dangerous viruses on their smartphones and other mobile devices from downloading porn videos and other adult content online. But that number dropped significantly in 2018.
“Searching for pornography online has become safer,” the Kaspersky researchers reported. “In 2018, 650,000 users faced attacks launched from online resources. That is 36 percent less than in 2017.”
“Malware,” short for “malicious software,” is a type of program that is covertly installed on a computer when a user downloads a seemingly unrelated file from the internet. The code for the malware program is embedded in the file in a manner undetectable to the typical user, and activates itself when the download is complete.
Kaspersky detected 57 different functions of malware installed inside of porn files, the most common being “Trojans,” "Trojan downloaders” and “Adware.” Trojans are programs that secretly install themselves and then gain control of some, or all, of a device’s functions.
Adware, as the name implies, causes a device to display unwanted advertising messages that can be a simple nuisance, or can dominate a computer’s entire screen.
But what do hackers who steal porn site login credentials do with the stolen info? Exactly what one might expect. They sell it.
According to a report by PC Magazine, Kaspersky found thousands of porn site logins available for sale on the “dark web,” that is, sites online that are hidden from normal search engines, and may be accessed using only special software designed for the “dark web.”
"In total, 29 websites displayed more than 15,000 offers to buy one or more accounts to pornography websites," Kaspersky reported. Where Pornhub, for example, charges $9.99 per month for a premium subscription, black market login credentials were sold on the dark web for as little as three bucks.
“Premium access credentials to porn websites might not seem like the most obvious thing to steal,” Oleg Kupreev, a Kaspersky Lab researcher, said as quoted by Info Security Magazine. “However, the fact that the number of sales offers relating to such credentials on the dark web is rising, and the increased efforts to distribute such malware, shows that this is a profitable and popular line of illegal business.”
Photo by Nara.nra28 / Wikimedia Commons
