Infotech Lead India: According to the results of McAfee’s study titled ‘India’s Most Dangerous Cricketer’, Christopher Henry ‘Chris’ Gayle takes the top spot followed by Brett Lee and S Sreesanth.
McAfee researched the season’s top cricketers based on their risk quotient in the Indian cyberspace. Commenting on cybercriminals’ tendency to use the names of popular celebrities, Venkatasubrahmanyam Krishnapur, VP 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 often use popular names to direct people to malicious sites designed to steal passwords and personal information. Gullible fans get directed to such sites through search engines using strings such as ‘name of cricketer’ combined with words like ‘free downloads’, ‘hot pictures’, ‘wallpapers’, and ‘videos’.
The McAfee SiteAdvisor site rating indicates the sites that are risky to search for cricketing celebrity names on the web and calculate an overall risk percentage. According to the site rating, the top 10 cricketers with the highest risk scores in the Indian cyberspace are Chris Gayle, Brett Lee, S Sreesanth, Yuvraj Singh, David Miller, Dale Steyn, Kevin Pietersen and Kieron Pollard tied at number seven, Mitchell Johnson, Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Sachin Tendulkar.
McAfee advises users to beware of content that prompts them to download anything before presenting content. Free downloads are found to be the highest virus-prone search terms. People searching for downloadable videos or files may be at risk of exposing their computer to malware.
McAfee Total Protection security software offers consumers anti-virus, anti-spyware, identity and firewall protection. The SiteAdvisor displays red, yellow or green web safety ratings within internet search results pages. It blocks risky websites and adds anti-phishing protection to enable users to safely surf and shop online.
