In this paper, we focus on an event-synced navigation attack, a type of web-based SE attack that generates UGC with links to malicious websites and distributes it synced with a real-life event at a specific time. Attackers can also use UGC on a UGC service platform to disseminate web-based social engineering (SE) attacks to a large number of people. The growth of user-generated content service platforms has led to people relying on user-generated content (UGC) rather than search engines when searching for and accessing information on the web. Given the magnitude of the discovered abuse, we engineer features that characterize FLIS pages and build a classifier to identify FLIS pages with high accuracy and low false positives, in an effort to help human analysts identify malicious services and, whenever appropriate, initiate content-takedown requests. At the same time, we encounter substandard advertisement setups by the FLIS parties, along with potential trademark infringements through the abuse of domain names and logos of popular TV channels. On the other hand, we find that FLIS parties are often reported for copyright violations and host their infrastructure predominantly in Europe and Belize. On the one hand, our analysis reveals that users of FLIS websites are generally exposed to deceptive advertisements, malware, malicious browser extensions, and fraudulent scams. We develop an infrastructure that enables us to perform more than 850,000 visits by identifying 5,685 free live streaming domains, and analyze more than 1 Terabyte of traffic to map the parties that constitute the FLIS ecosystem. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the FLIS ecosystem by mapping all parties involved in the anonymous broadcast of live streams, discovering their modus operandi, and quantifying the consequences for common Internet users who utilize these services. Despite the immense popularity of these services, little is known about the parties that facilitate it and maintain webpages to index links for free viewership. Free live streaming (FLIS) services attract millions of viewers and make heavy use of deceptive advertisements.

Recent years have seen extensive growth of services enabling free broadcasts of live streams on the Web.

Wiziwig tv index