McAfee unveiled results of its ‘India’s Most Dangerous Cricketer’ study which researched this season’s top celebrities of the cricketing world on their risk quotient in the Indian cyberspace. Christopher Henry ‘Chris’ Gayle, took the top slot, followed by Brett Lee and S Sreesanth; according to world’s largest dedicated security technology company McAfee.
Commenting on the findings of the study, Venkatasubrahmanyam Krishnapur, Vice-President of Engineering (CMSB), McAfee India Centre said, “Cyber criminals constantly leverage famous personalities and very cleverly time their attacks to coincide with popular events in luring people to websites with malicious software. In the context of the ongoing cricketing leagues, cyber crooks are leveraging famous cricketers for their nefarious gains. During such events, eager cricket crazy fans are highly motivated to search for photos, videos, score and stories of their favorite cricketers online and in that moment of weakness they are lured into clicking malicious links that puts them at considerable risk.”
Cybercriminals follow the latest trends, often using the names of popular celebrities to lure people to malicious sites designed to steal passwords and personal information. Fans looking for results on search engines using strings such as ‘name of cricketer’ combined with words like ‘free downloads’, ‘hot pictures’, ‘wallpapers’, and ‘videos’ are at risk of running themselves into malicious sites.
The study for ‘Most Dangerous IPL Player’ used the McAfee SiteAdvisor site rating which indicates the sites that are risky to search for cricketing celebrity names on the web and calculate an overall risk percentage.
