Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is one of the biggest movie releases of the year and scammers wasted no time taking advantage of it. Within hours of the film’s release, we found scams targeting people looking for pirated copies. Some used fake browser warnings on piracy sites, while others disguised malware as movie downloads.
Some used fake browser error messages designed to funnel people through malvertising networks. Others offered what appeared to be movie downloads that were actually Windows executables disguised as video files.
Neither scam has anything to do with the movie itself. They’re simply taking advantage of people searching for a popular new release.
The Odyssey piracy scams we found
We observed two main tactics.
