Scammers Target Users Interested in Sucker Punch Movie

Security researchers from GFI Software warn users interested in the new Sucker Punch movie to stay away from websites that offer to stream it for free, because most of them are part of scams.

Sucker Punch is not a movie for everyone. It is a weird, but satisfying, mixture of traditional comic books, Japanese manga, steampunk, goth and video gaming that is likely to appeal mostly to younger men.

Nevertheless, it already seems to be building a strong fan base around the Internet and in some communities, like the video gaming one, the interest runs really high.

GFI's Software senior threat researcher Christopher Boyd, aka "paperghost," and an avid gamer himself, warns that Sucker Punch-themed survey scams abound on the Internet.

"I think we all know the answer to the question of whether or not I'll be watching a movie involving a giant robot Samurai waving a chaingun around this weekend, but it's worth noting that - as with anything movie related - the 'fill in the survey / download a program to watch the content' sites are out in force," he writes on the company's blog.

First of all, watching commercial films for free on the Internet is usually illegal, but even if you're prepared to accept that, streaming sites that offer recently released movies are usually either fake or offer videos of a quality so bad that it takes half the fun out of watching them.

The fake sites are set up around affiliate marketing scams and ask visitors to participate in surveys before being given access to the content. There is, of course, no video, but scammers earn a commissions each time visitors go through a survey.

Mr. Boyd also notes that in order to increase their credibility some of these websites begin streaming the first few minutes of the real movie before pausing and launching the survey popup.

Other sites use the same method to trick users into downloading and installing adware applications by passing them as special video players or codecs.