Student surprise: malware masked as textbooks and essays

[harlan4096]

We have written on numerous occasions about how easy it is to inadvertently pick up some nasty stuff when you try to download popular TV shows or game cheats. However, cybercriminals do not just limit themselves to entertainment products. You can also stumble upon a virus when looking for work- or study-related materials. This is particularly important to keep in mind as the academic year starts. That is because the cost of textbooks and other materials for K-12 and college students often leads to many looking for more affordable and free alternatives online.

Download an essay, and get some malware thrown in

We decided to find out how frequently malicious content is encountered among materials that are posted for free access. To do this, we checked how many infections Kaspersky solutions identified in files with school- and student-related filenames. This exercise yielded quite a few results!

As it turns out, over the past academic year, cybercriminals who have been targeting the field of education have tried to attack our users more than 356,000 times in total. Of these, 233,000 cases were malicious essays that were downloaded to computers owned by more than 74,000 people and that our solutions managed to block.

About a third of those files were textbooks: we detected 122,000 attacks by malware that was disguised as textbooks. More than 30,000 users tried to open these files.

English textbooks hiding malware were most popular among K-12 students with 2,080 attempted downloads. Math textbooks were the next most common, nearly infecting the computers of 1,213 students. Literature closes out the top three most dangerous subjects with 870 potential victims.

Criminals also targeted less popular subjects. We have come across malware masquerading as textbooks in the natural sciences (18 users tried to download these) and in less commonly taught foreign languages at both the K-12 and college levels.

Which types of malware are spread under the guise of textbooks and essays?

If in your search for study materials you find yourself on an unscrupulous website and try to download something from there, you risk encountering just about any type of malware. However, certain types of threats are distributed in this way more than others. Here are the four most popular malware types that are the most frequently distributed under the guise of study materials.

4th place: MediaGet torrent application downloader

Sites with textbooks that are littered with enticing ‘Free Download’ buttons often give users the MediaGet downloader instead of the document that they were looking for. This is the most innocuous of surprises that awaits K-12 and college students who are searching for educational resources. This downloader will retrieve a torrent client that the user does not need.

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