Adware, Miners & unwanted extensions being pushed by Fake Adult sites!

Fake Adult sites are being used as an outlet for malware such as adware, in-browser cryptocurrency miners, PuPs, unwanted browser extensions and software utility tools such as media players, security software, games etc. Unsuspecting users are often gullible to scams and fall into the traps laid out by cyber miscreants.

Most users who visit these sites know that they are bound to come across excessive ads and pop-ups. Many times getting redirected on an adult site is considered normal and closing the new redirect and moving on is what users do mostly. Thus, if they face a notification for updating their media player, on a web page where they are trying to look at a video, then most users install the update.

The so called ‘media player’ update is just another door for the cyber miscreants to walk into your system and install malicious software without your approval. Misguiding the user to install the adware, in-browser miner, extensions, etc. is what most cyber miscreants do.

The fake adult sites contain links that are auto-generated according to the popularity of the adult stars and keyword searches from the users. This is done to get the maximum number of web pages to show up in the search engine results. Once the user tries to play a video, a fake notification to update or download a media player pops-up. The notification displays an error message that states the inability to play a video. It notifies the users that they need to download the media player mentioned in the fake notification to properly play the video.

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