Spotify playlists and podcasts are being abused to push pirated software, game cheat codes, spam links, and “warez” sites.
By injecting targeted keywords and links in playlist names and podcast descriptions, threat actors may benefit from boosting SEO for their dubious online properties, since Spotify’s web player results appear in search engines like Google.
“Warez”. That’s a name I’ve not heard for a long time.
If i find out about a piracy site though any means other than word of mouth and my own research, I assume it’s fake and malicious.
Oh! We’re reviving “warez”? Nice!
I’d always pronounced it “where-azz” and I’m not sure I could ever switch to “wares”
My best friend back in the day pronounced it WAR-EZ. It was a constant point of contention between us.
I enjoy that they’re focusing on ‘promoting pirated software and game cheats’ before talking about malware first.
Cybersecurity ethusiast Karol Paciorek who spotted the playlist said, “cybercriminals exploit Spotify for malware distribution. Why? Spotify has a strong reputation and its pages are easily indexed by search engines, making it an effective platform to promote malicious links.”
That’s a very different, more helpful story. “Watch out, Spotify links are being used to distribute malware to your computer.”
When abusing platforms, spammers and scammers leave no stone unturned to promote their agenda.
Money. They aren’t doing this as part of a ‘peons of the world unite to steal software’ scheme. They’re doing it to generate traffic so they make more ad revenue.
TIL game cheats is a category of deplorable that belongs with pirates sofware and warez.
I remember looking on line to unlock game cheats for Saints Row IV specifically to turn off the downstage pixellation effect and found that this was the most common SR4 cheat in use.
