Amazon, Amazon Music, and Audible, an Amazon-owned on-line audiobook and podcast service, have been flooded with bogus listings that push doubtful “forex trading” websites, Telegram channels, and suspicious hyperlinks claiming to supply pirated software program.
Amazon listings promote illicit websites
Yesterday, BleepingComputer reported how risk actors had been abusing Spotify playlists and podcasts to promote pirated software program and sport cheats.
The playlist names, podcast descriptions, and bogus “episodes” in these listings urged listeners to go to exterior hyperlinks to doubtful web sites.
We’ve got now come throughout a number of listings on Amazon’s web sites together with amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.com.au, and Amazon Music that promote doubtful “forex trading” schemes and hyperlink to “warez” websites.
Spammers are moreover abusing Audible podcasts as one other vector to advertise their illicit operations.
No digital platform that is open to all is immune from being spammed. What makes circumstances involving Spotify or Amazon peculiarly fascinating is, one would instinctively count on the overhead related to podcast and digital music distribution to discourage spammers who’d in any other case depend on low hanging fruits, equivalent to writing spammy social media posts or importing YouTube movies with tainted descriptions.
An Amazon Music (Colombia) itemizing beneath which seems in Google search outcomes for “download bookmap… final full crack” is proven beneath:
(BleepingComputer)
Equally, Amazon web sites together with amazon.com and .com.au had been caught serving listings for “bot trading software” laden with exterior hyperlinks.
BleepingComputer noticed the size of the audio “episodes” printed underneath these “podcasts” was zero seconds. As such, these listings served no function apart from flooding Amazon’s digital properties in an try to spice up the search engine rating for spammy domains, a way known as web optimization poisoning.
BleepingComputer reached out to Amazon and Audible with our questions and shared one of many instance listings with Amazon nicely upfront of publishing.
Amazon eliminated the instance itemizing throughout its web sites however didn’t reply to our questions.
‘Buying and selling’ marketplaces and Telegram channels
A typical pattern we noticed amongst many such listings was the point out of a doubtful “trading platform” referred to as EliteMarketMovers.
Some listings ship customers off to the Telegram and YouTube channels of this “marketplace.”
Whereas the “EliteMarketMovers.com” area now not responds attributable to a probable server misconfiguration, we peeked into the archived copies of the web site:
The web site claims to supply a number of “trading pairs” and “top forex robot” merchandise, however there’s little indication or assurance that these are genuine choices or that the platform is a licensed and controlled entity in your jurisdiction.
Spam an ongoing drawback for podcast distribution providers
As we explored yesterday, like a number of Spotify “podcasts”, these listings are additionally abusing third-party podcast publication and distribution providers to push their bogus merchandise on excessive rating web sites like Amazon.
BleepingComputer seen an an identical “Powered by Firstory” banner on these listings, implying the “podcast” producers are abusing Firstory to advertise their operations throughout Amazon, Spotify, and different streaming platforms:
Launched in 2019, Firstory is a web-based service designed to “empower podcasters in the world to distribute everywhere and start to connect with audiences!”
One can use Firstory to publish podcasts on Spotify, however the platform acknowledges that spam is an ongoing drawback that it’s specializing in curbing.
“Spam accounts and content are ongoing challenges, and it’s something we continue to focus on improving,” wrote Firstory co-founder Stanley Yu to BleepingComputer in response to our questions yesterday.
Anybody can use Firstory to publish podcasts to streaming platforms.
“However, we do have certain filters in place to prevent accounts using specific fraudulent domains or email addresses containing variations such as account+[numbers]@gmail.com or ‘.’ in emails.”
“These spam accounts not only violate the rights of the creators we value most, but they also drive up our operational costs. We’ve dedicated considerable resources to addressing this issue,” states Yu.
Along with collaborating intently with streaming platforms, Firstory continues to report infringing content material to platforms, make use of know-how to scan podcast titles and shownotes for particular spammy key phrases, and block suspicious e-mail addresses utilized by risk actors to pollute these platforms.
