Human manipulation is the main driver of cyber threat success, new research from Avast has found.
Social engineering campaigns used to distribute scams and similar threats accounted for 90% of all blocked threats across the mobile landscape.
YouTube is also quickly becoming a breeding ground for phishing campaigns, social engineering that uses video content, and channel hijacking to distribute scams.
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Avast described how threat actors are increasingly turning to YouTube as a means to spread scams and deepfakes through seemingly legitimate channels.
Scammers often offer to collaborate with channels with an established audience, building trust throughout, before sending malware that leads to theft of the channel through account compromise or cookie theft.
Additionally, threat actors on YouTube also abuse hobbies like gaming and common antivirus-related issues by including malicious links in video descriptions that appear to be legitimate software downloads, but instead download and install malware. on the victim's device.
Scams using cryptocurrency interest are also seeing a rise in popularity, with channels dedicated to cryptocurrency news and information being stolen by threat actors and then used to share crypto scams, such as giveaways that require a deposit to participate.
In 2023 alone, Avast says it has protected four million users against threats distributed through YouTube, and more recent figures from January to March 2024 show that 500,000 people have been protected so far.
