Back in July, popular torrenting website KickassTorrents was seized after a court order from the United States Department of Justice, knocking the website offline. Eventually, mirrors to bring the site back up were created.
One specific mirror, KAT.am, was seized during the past week, due to a complaint from the Motion Picture Association. However, the domain resurfaced recently, which stated that it contained a copy of KickassTorrents' database. While opening it will display what looks to be a fully working torrent website, it is not known to visitors that the site is a fake one, and is controlled by cybercriminals.
If a user attempts to download any torrent listed, they will be prompted with a message stating that they need to create a KickassTorrents account in order to download their file. Clicking on 'Create Free Account' will lead visitors to a fraudulent website outside of KAT.am, which will ask for personal information, including credit card details. If such details are entered, scammers will be able to steal the information of innocent visitors to use for their own business.
According to a report from TorrentFreak, scammers were able to get ahold of the domain after it was made available for registration after it was seized. This then enabled the cybercriminals to pick up the domain, and pass it off as a legitimate KickassTorrents mirror.
While these kinds of tactics are undeniably not new anymore, it still pays to be careful on the places we go to on the internet, in order to avoid contracting malware and sharing our personal information into the wrong hands.
Source: TorrentFreak via International Business Times
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