Beware: Hackers are Cashing Out at the Expense of the Alleged Andrea Brillantes Video Scandal

Netizens are warned from clicking fake videos of supposed Andrea Brillantes video scandal. The Internet is caught by storm for two days now with the alleged set of videos trending not only in Google search, but also in social media.

In an email sent to The Philippine Pride from Cybersafe Inc, a Quezon City based-IT company providing web safety and security services, IT Expert and system administrator Engineer Allan Mercader, said that one of their customers have their system crashed after an employee clicked on a supposed video of the young actress, which turned out to be fake and full of virus.

The employee allegedly visited a local satire site and from there, clicked a link to the video. A program was automatically installed in his computer and started scanning the whole system. It was later found out that the computer was severely infected and some important information has been sent to the hacker’s server.

Later, a message asking the owner to buy a certain software in order to fix the system appeared.

Three more computers were affected according to Mercader.

“Hackers are trying their best to cash out whenever there are trending issues like this, because they know that many people are searching for the said scandalous video. They use fake videos and even photos to lure their victims”, Mercader said.

In separate case, a Twitter user told TPP that a complicated application was automatically installed in his smartphone after he clicked a fake video link. Because he was not aware of the technicalities, he was forced to purchase a program that would fix his gadget; which is believed to be owned also by the hacker.

Other reported incidents ranges from forcing people to click ads, asking to download a program to watch the said scandalous videos, and even clicking on something to open the page or to play the video.

Cybersafe Inc said the damage on their customer’s system would have been devastated if the employee did not inform their IT specialist immediately.

“We advise the public to restrain from searching these alleged scandal videos because we can’t get anything good from it. It could give us not only legal problems (because the concerned is minor), but also serious security issues on our system, be is personal use or work-related”, Mercader said.

/Carla Gamboa/

Comments

comments