Don’t pirate the Super Mario Bros movie – it’s probably just malware
You should not copy the new Super Mario Bros movie, not only because it is illegal and morally wrong, but also because you may infect your computer with a Trojan.
Cybersecurity researchers from Reason Labs say they have found a number of Trojans disguised as the HD version of the new blockbuster movie, hijacking the victim’s browser, search engine page and stealing sensitive data from infected endpoints.
Trojans have not been given a specific name, but researchers say that they bring material benefits to attackers. If a victim installs malware, their default search engine changes, so when they enter a query in their browser, they are redirected to another website and possibly display their advertisements from which the attackers profit.
Millions of victims
The researchers stated that these Trojans also steal sensitive information from the compromised devices, but did not explain exactly how this process works, where the C2 servers are located, or how the data is sent and exfiltrated.
Reason Labs says that so far over 150,000 of its customers have reported being targeted by these Trojans. Hence, the researchers concluded that the number of potential victims is probably in the millions when we consider the countless number of consumers who are not Reason Labs customers.
They did not say where the malicious files are hosted, whether they are distributed via torrents or otherwise. So far, you can recognize them by their filenames, which are “super mario bros moviehd.exe” and “super mario bros moviecam.exe”.
Cybercriminals are known to use trending events to further their nefarious goals. The World Cup, the Olympic Games, the Superbowl, the Covid-19 pandemic are just some of the global events they have used to try to distribute malware to people. In this particular case, the best way to protect your devices is to make sure your content is only accessed from legitimate sources.