Cybercriminals are always on the lookout for an easy mark. And like any big event, they congregate looking for victims. March Madness is one such event.

Security firm iSheriff posted a list of the top security threats to expect around this major college sports event. Most of the risks involve bogus apps or sites that lure unsuspecting users with promises of March Madness coverage or access.

Here are just a few of the threats we have seen in relation to March Madness:

1. SEO poisoning have skewed the results of March Madness related searches so effectively that links to malware infected pages were on the first page of search results of every major search engine.
2. The US Department of Defense experienced severe bandwidth utilization issues during critical military deployments due to the strain on the network by games being streamed.
3. Thousands of drive-by and download and install malware infections from March Madness related sites, both legitimate and spoofed.
4. Phishing attacks targeting users following their March Madness brackets on popular sites such as ESPN and Yahoo.
5. Malware masquerading as video players that will allow the user to stream the games.
6. Links posted in forums, comments and social media that promise March Madness info or streams, but only direct the user to an infected site.
7. A large influx of fake betting sites used to grift the credit card info of unsuspecting users
8. Several companies across the country experiencing production impacting bandwidth issues due to users streaming games during work hours.

Don’t open email attachments or click on unknown links, and be careful which apps or websites you visit as you try to surreptitiously watch games at work.


Source: PCWorld