Kaspersky Lab researchers conducted a study during the past school year and found that students looking for school textbooks and essays in electronic format on the Internet can face a wide range of malicious attacks .
The new school year is starting very soon and students have already started looking for educational materials (books, textbooks) at the best possible price. It is therefore certain that some will resort to the Internet to find an economical solution.
People often resort to shopping online because of the best prices they find. However, there are many risks. Malicious hackers are ruthless and will not miss an opportunity to attack. They can infect your computer with malicious downloaders, which download and execute banking Trojans and ransomware or worms, which can quickly spread to all your contacts and all the devices on your network.
Research: More than 365,000 attacks took place in one year
Kaspersky researchers conducted a study and found that attacks using malicious documentsrelated to educational content (textbooks, essays, etc.) exceeded 365,000in the previous school year.
The company said: “Of these, 233,000 cases were malicious essays that were downloaded to 74,000 people’s computers, but we managed to block them.”.
“About a third of these files were manuals: we detected 122,000 malware disguised as manuals. More than 30,000 users tried to open these files.”
The most popular (malicious) textbooks were those dealing with English, mathematics , and literature, with 2,080, 1,213, and 870 downloads, respectively.
Hackers used various malware to steal data and take control of their victims' devices. The most common, however, were a MediaGet torrent application, the WinLNK.Agent. gen and Win32.Agent.ifdx downloaders, and the Stalk worm.
The MediaGet downloader can only download and install torrent clients. However, the other two downloaders are capable of infecting victims' computers with various malware, including adware, cryptominers, spyware, banking Trojans, and ransomware, which can encrypt all their data.
Researchers also discovered a worm, named Worm.Win32.Stalk.a (Stalk), which sends spam emails to victims and attempts to infect any connected USB flash drives and devices on the same network.
Stalk can also send emails to victims' contactsto infect their devices. This is a rather sneaky and clever method, as most people are more likely to open a file (in this case, an essay or textbook) when they know and trust the sender.
Finally, according to researchers, Stalk is able to download other malicious applications to the infected device and secretly copy and send files from the victim's computer to the malware administrators
Therefore, if you plan to download manuals or other educational materials from the Internet, choose your sites , constantly update your software, and contact people who send you emails with attachments to confirm that they really come from them.
