Barbie Fever Ranks India Among The Top 3 Countries To Witness Malware Scam

This season, the release of the highly anticipated Barbie movie has set off several trends amid this whirlwind, research has discovered a slew of new online scams wherein movie-related downloads and ticketing scams are leading to users' personal and financial data thefts.

The research by McAfee, an online protection company, said India ranked third amongst the countries facing the malware scams.

The study underlined that in India several malicious attempts to trick victims into downloading the “Barbie” movie in different languages were observed. A link packed with malware was the source of the cyber theft it added.

The cyber scam surged in just three weeks with hundreds of new malware instances wherein the majority of cases were noticed in the United States by 37 per cent. The other countries that faced the cyber crisis were Australia with 6 per cent, the UK and India with 5 per cent respectively. 

France, Japan and Ireland also experienced the malware with 3 per cent of user thefts online.

The online protection company labelled the malware as "Redline Stealer" which siphoned personal information, login details and more from the user's devices.

Commenting on the online theft Steve Grobman, Chief Technology Officer at McAfee said, “Cybercriminals are always on the lookout for opportunities to make phishing and other scams more attractive and believable. They often leverage popular and well-publicised events such as movie premieres, concerts, or sporting events to trick users into clicking on malicious links."