Experts have identified a sharp increase in the number of fake theater websites in Russia

Experts from Sberbank's subsidiary BI.ZONE recorded a tenfold increase in the number of fraudulent theater domains this summer, reports RBC . If in June they found 32 links to such resources, then in August there were already 351 of them. Although deceived viewers are the first to suffer from the actions of fraudsters, the theaters themselves suffer significant reputational damage.

Fake theater websites look almost like the real thing, with a poster, performance descriptions, and a notice to buy tickets online due to the pandemic. But after paying for the tickets, the client does not receive them.

Most often, scammers forged the sites of Lenkom, the Satire Theater, the Maly Theater, the Theater. Leningrad City Council, theaters. Stanislavsky, Vasiliev, Tovstonogov and the children's theater "Aquarium", the experts found out. The cybercriminals took the website of the State Academic Theater of St. Petersburg "Comedian Shelter" as the basis for most of the phishing domains. The interface of this particular site turned out to be easy to fake, the BI.ZONE expert explained to RBC, but another source of the publication in the cybersecurity market explained this by the absence of a special certificate on the specified site and its low level of cybersecurity.

• At the same time, the Satire Theater complained about the lack of technical ability to quickly block fake clone sites, which may be in a gray area from a legal point of view. According to the representative, the theater sends complaints to hosting providers about such resources at least once a month, but if the site makes changes and claims that it provides information from open sources, the providers do not touch them.
• Group-IB explained the increase in the number of phishing sites in the theater sector with a new type of fraud, when scammers get to know each other on social networks or dating apps and invite the victim on a date to the cinema or theater, offering to buy tickets via a link that leads to a fake resource.
• Positive Technologies referred to the growth of phishing in the retail sector as a whole - according to the company, the number of cyber attacks on enterprises in this area has increased by 153% compared to last year.