What aspect of the movie industry does digital technology affect? Some would say the filmmaking, the distribution, and also how the film is marketed. However, digital technology also comes with its greatest danger: cyber threats and rampant piracy.
The infamous Sony Pictures hack back in 2014 is one of the greatest cyber threat examples in real life. The perpetrators leaked confidential data, unreleased films, and internal emails, causing huge financial and reputational losses for the film industry.
If this reality isn’t scary enough, remember that digital movie piracy is also pretty common nowadays. If left unchecked, will filmmakers and great talents stay in this industry, knowing the risks are getting more alarming?
Common Movie Industry Fraud & Attack Types
There are several ways fraud can attack the movie industry. Let’s delve into each common fraud and attack type and how it can harm movie streaming services that people loved:
Digital Piracy
A well-known common fraud in the film industry involves piracy in one way or another. A lot of people are unaware of how piracy affects the movie industry, especially now that streaming apps filled with digital content exist.
There are a couple of ways that people can access these pirated media, but the question is how the digital media could be easily accessed illegally. For example, movies from streaming apps can be pirated using screen capture.
Even if the streamed movies are encrypted, many users can find a way to decrypt them using specific tools. This is an ongoing battle that many streaming services face in order to prevent further financial losses.
App Forgery
Piracy seems to be a large issue at the moment, but let’s not forget about the other issue: cyber threats. While this is still about piracy in the heartbeat, the intention is now different. Let’s take a look at one of the examples:
- The fraudster created a fake movie streaming app by forging the real version. This can be done by unpackaging, decompiling, and analyzing the source code to modify it.
- The forged app is now being published to official stores or third-party sites. The app tries to sell the premium monthly subscription by injecting intrusive ads for free users.
- The fraudster gains a big revenue from this subscription, while the real streaming app suffers financial losses from having their content pirated.
Malware Attacks
Using malware to attack businesses is a tale as old as time. Hackers can use malware, such as ransomware, to leak valuable intellectual property from the movie streaming industry, then extort them for a massive profit.
Malware can also be used to compromise security in movie streaming apps as well. As a result, fraudsters can steal sensitive information from the victim’s account.
SO File Tampering
Movie streaming apps can also be tampered with by finding the vulnerabilities in the shared library known as the .so file. This shared object library contains code that the app needs in order to perform a specific function.
If this shared library can be tampered with, the app will be rendered unsafe. Thus, fraudsters can easily bypass security measures, gain unauthorized access to the data, and compromise the movie streaming app.
Reverse Engineering
Much like other applications, movie streaming apps can also be reverse-engineered. The method is not that different compared to app forgery, but now the intention is to find vulnerabilities and gain source code.
In this context, reverse engineering allows fraudsters to either steal intellectual property from the app’s back-end servers or steal the victim’s account by posing as a legit app. Either way, it can harm business.
Keypaz: The Best Solution for Preventing Fraud in the Movie Industry
The danger of movie industry fraud is alarming, but it is not a problem if businesses implement strong fraud prevention. Keypaz, for example, has all the tools a movie business needs to protect their service from threats.
Using device intelligence, Keypaz functions as a real-time fraud protection, where it can monitor for suspicious activity, such as:
- Suspicious streaming requests, app cloning, and an attempt at screen capturing. Keypaz’s behavioral analytics lets businesses detect suspicious user behavior like these.
- Device that has been detected with having malware or tampered apps. Thanks to Keypaz’s device intelligence, it can monitor devices that are connected to the service.
- Unusual behavior patterns like users accessing streaming services from unauthorized apps/sites. Keypaz can help combat fraud that bypasses DRM or security features.
Without protection from Keypaz, companies will be left sitting ducks. Hence, Keypaz can help them to protect the services from attack, saving money and their reputation.
Key Takeaways
The entertainment industry, like movies, still faces the same threat as other services. Countless cybercriminals will adapt to many common frauds, meaning movie streaming apps need to adapt even further in order to combat such fraud.
Worse, they also need to adapt this real-time protection as soon as possible, before it wreaks havoc. Don’t wait any further by implementing Keypaz in your services to secure your entire movie industry!