{"id":15098,"date":"2019-04-15T09:10:02","date_gmt":"2019-04-15T17:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2019\/04\/15\/news-8847\/"},"modified":"2019-04-15T09:10:02","modified_gmt":"2019-04-15T17:10:02","slug":"news-8847","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2019\/04\/15\/news-8847\/","title":{"rendered":"Ellen DeGeneres giveaway scam spreading on social media"},"content":{"rendered":"

Credit to Author: Christopher Boyd| Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2019 16:14:48 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

Scammers are pushing multiple fake Facebook profiles of Ellen DeGeneres<\/a>, popular US TV show host and producer, with the goal of tricking people into jumping through a few money-making hoops. This isn\u2019t a sophisticated scam. It isn\u2019t hacking the Gibson. It won\u2019t be the focus of a cutting edge infosec talk. However, it’s certainly doing some damage\u2014up to a point.<\/p>\n

This scam is a victim of its own ambition.<\/p>\n

What are they doing?<\/h3>\n

The profiles all have one main promotion point, claiming that Ellen has a competition on-the-go, and people entering will be fortunate enough to win all manner of cool prizes. One profile touts pictures of Ellen standing next to a car; in another, she holds aloft a giant VISA card. Many of the fakes push genuine video clips of the TV host talking about charity drives to add a little more credibility to their fakeout.<\/p>\n

\"Fake<\/a> \"More<\/a> \"Guess<\/a> \"\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

The scammers somehow managed to make clips of Ellen talking about donation efforts from viewers sound like she\u2019s giving things away. The illusion falls apart with a little bit of thought, but as with most scams, the allure of something for nothing proves too good to resist.<\/p>\n

What do potential victims have to do?<\/h3>\n

Some of the pages deviate from the template a little, but for the most part, the thing that gets this scam moving is the below text. It\u2019s your standard plea to overshare the bogus offer to friends, family, and other contacts across the social network:<\/p>\n

\""Please<\/a><\/p>\n

Click to enlarge<\/p>\n

\n

Surprise in the next 24 hours, I will randomly select people on Facebook, everyone who *shares* will receive a gift card, cash, and a big winner can win a car & house “Share now” don’t miss! We are watching!!! I will choose 500 lucky people, $5,000,000 each only follows instructions<\/em><\/p>\n

Step 1- Love it<\/em><\/p>\n

Step 2- Share<\/em><\/p>\n

Step 3- Comment on “DONE”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ve shared the scam, what next?<\/h3>\n

Good question, potential fake Ellen giveaway victim.<\/p>\n

What happens next is you\u2019re directed to the comments section of the various posts floating around. You\u2019ll then see one of half a dozen or so messages, roughly along the same lines:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cHi all, you must register your name by downloading my movie click here and your name will automatically be registered\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\""Download<\/a><\/p>\n

Click to enlarge<\/p>\n

Downloading\u2026your movie?<\/p>\n

Well, this took a weird turn. A few of the links lead to a blogspot page touting \u201cEllen Degeneres givaways 2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ellen...movies?\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Click to enlarge<\/p>\n

\n

“To become a winner, by downloading one movie, you have been registered as a winner”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Uh-huh. Weirdly the site also claims to offer up John Wick 3, Hellboy<\/em>, and Shazam<\/em>, which don\u2019t feel very Ellen-ish. Speaking of not very Ellen-ish, one of the other sites offers up those other well-known Ellen Degeneres classics: Glass<\/em> and Escape Room<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"This<\/a><\/p>\n

Click to enlarge<\/p>\n

Yet another site, which appears to have fallen out of a late 1990’s design wormhole, sends you elsewhere when clicking the register button.<\/p>\n

\""Ellen<\/a><\/p>\n

Click to enlarge<\/p>\n

Where to next?<\/h3>\n

All of these blogs send clickers to the kind of movie sign-up portal we’ve been seeing online for some time. Suffice to say, we won’t go over old ground, but you are absolutely not going to win any Ellen competitions by registering on any of the below sites. At best, you’ll end up with a one-off membership fee or a rolling subscription.<\/p>\n

\"Movie<\/a> \"\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

That\u2019s quite a scam daisy-chain<\/h3>\n

It is! It\u2019s such a weirdly specific target, and so poorly thought out. Are the core demographic of Ellen fans really going to start with a cookie-cutter chain letter spam missive on Facebook, get caught up in a maze of confusing \u201cEllen starred in Batman Returns<\/em>, you know\u201d blogger pages, before ending up on a variety of utterly unrelated \u201csign up to watch this movie\u201d portals\u2014and then actually sign up?<\/p>\n

Generally, most scams that have a movie sign-up site as a destination are a lot more straightforward than this: one click, BAM. Done. Even when these scams cross into strange realms, such as the fake John Wick ebooks<\/a> from February, they tend to net out a more simple, and thus easier to ensnare users, process.<\/p>\n

This scam has more twists and turns than Ellen popping up unannounced at the end of Usual Suspects<\/em>. If we had to guess, we’d say “strong opening performance, closely followed by a viewing figures nosedive.”<\/p>\n

A captive audience?<\/h3>\n

From a cursory glance at stats available for the blogspot websites via the Bitly links, this theory would appear to be borne out. There\u2019s a lot of sharing and commenting apparently taking place on Facebook itself, but in terms of translating to actual movie spam page clickthroughs?<\/p>\n

\"Scam<\/a><\/p>\n

Click to enlarge<\/p>\n

Not so much. Only one of the three sites have anything approaching a regular flow of traffic, and those are small numbers. The second site has about 1,400 clicks, but that\u2019s spread across two spikes in February and April. The third site has a grand total of 48 clicks at time of writing.<\/p>\n

When the daisy chain snaps<\/h3>\n

Someone had a clever idea here: focus a scam around a celebrity you wouldn\u2019t perhaps think of being the bait, and wrap it across multiple social media profiles. In theory, it could have been a winner for the individuals behind it. However, all inventiveness began and ended with the inclusion of Ellen. In the same way innovative online fakeouts gave way to endless, dreary years of \u201chere\u2019s a survey scam,\u201d those seem to have been replaced by \u201chere\u2019s a movie sign-up scam\u201d instead.<\/p>\n

What you tend to see now is the movie sign-up scams jammed into almost every social engineering con trick around. They are\u2014just like Ellen playing Agent Smith in The Matrix<\/em>\u2014inevitable.<\/p>\n

Cancelling the show<\/h3>\n

Ultimately, then, this is a good example of a low-level scam gone utterly off the rails. Overloading something like this with needless complexity and multiple steps sounds cool on paper, but what this actually<\/em> does is help potential victims steer clear. When they get bored, or confused, or drift off, that\u2019s bad news for the scammers, and great news for everyone else.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re behind this, please: Keep up the terrible work.<\/p>\n

The post Ellen DeGeneres giveaway scam spreading on social media<\/a> appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/blog.malwarebytes.com\/feed\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Credit to Author: Christopher Boyd| Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2019 16:14:48 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Scammers take aim at fans of Ellen DeGeneres with a bizarre chain of giveaways and free movie websites. Will anyone take the bait?<\/p>\n

Categories: <\/p>\n