While gamers from North America and Europe are still waiting for the release of Diablo III this coming Tuesday (May 15), cybercriminals have already gone ahead and started taking advantage.
We found a search result for the string “diablo 3 free download” leading to a survey scam — a scheme frequently seen deployed through Facebook.
The search result below (highlighted in yellow) directs to the a page which appears to be the download page for Diablo III:
However, clicking the download button only leads to the following survey page:
Another result, one supposedly leading to a YouTube page (highlighted in red in Figure 1), leads to the following page:
Entering the site, the visitor is met with instructions that they need to follow in order to be able to download the beta version of Diablo III. Interestingly, the steps involve sharing a link through Facebook three times — once on the users’ wall and twice on game pages.
Of course, following the instructions do not really lead to a file download, instead only directing to yet another survey page:
As enticing as it is to be able to download a very popular game right before everyone else does, users should keep in mind that such shady offers are widely used as bait by cybercriminals.
Diablo 3 is not the first game used by cybercriminals for schemes, we’ve seen other popular games such as World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto being used in the past.
Trend Micro users are protected from the schemes reported above through the Trend MicroT Smart Network ProtectionT.
