In this study, academic researchers measured the Relative Risk (RR) of encountering a cyber threat on a sample of IPTV Subscription Services, P2P, illicit streaming and fraudulent sites in the Nordic countries. They found a trend away from P2P and web-based streaming piracy services towards IPTV subscription services.
Relative risk is like comparing how likely something is to happen in one situation compared to another. If the relative risk is 2, it means the user is twice as likely to get a virus by using a piracy service every day compared to not using one.
In the worst case scenario, the researchers found that Norway had the highest RR of 19.3, while Denmark had the lowest RR of 11.8 for P2P sites; Sweden had the highest RR of 25.3 for streaming sites, while Iceland had the lowest RR of 16.5; Norway had the highest RR of 21.0 for fraud sites, while Finland and Iceland had the lowest RR of 15.0. For IPTV Subscription Services in Sweden, the RR was 4.0.
With the increase in usage of IPTV Subscription Services in the Nordic region, the researchers also found a shift from consumers being the direct target of cyber attacks, focused on identity theft and identity fraud, to potentially being the unwitting conduits of broader attacks against corporate networks and critical infrastructure.
Methodology
Cyber threat data from Google’s VirusTotal product was used for the study, which pools cyber risk data from more than 90 cybersecurity companies, to estimate the relative risk, and we used a control set of the most popular mainstream sites to measure a baseline.
A number of false positives were identified in the VirusTotal data in relation to the control condition. In some cases, sites such as Google, YouTube, Microsoft and Twitter were flagged as “suspicious”, but these were not supported by manual inspection.
The researchers also mapped the most common tactics used by the malware samples identified using the industry-standard MITRE ATT&CK Framework. If a malware sample employed techniques associated with these tactics within a corporate network, it could result in various consequences.
The study was conducted by Paul Watters of Macquarie University and Joel Scanlan of Western Norway University of Applied Sciences using data from Mediavision. It was funded by the Motion Picture Asssociation.
Why it matters
The researchers recognized that the Nordic countries enjoy some of the highest incomes and standards of living globally. For historical reasons involving the support of liberty and freedoms, some Nordic countries have been associated with piracy, especially the infamous site “The Pirate Bay”. Notwithstanding the social and economic harms caused by piracy, it has been shown in many countries and regions around the world to pose quantifiably higher consumer cybersecurity risks compared to other sites.
Further reading
Consumer risk from piracy in the Nordic countries. Research paper. Released April 29, 2026. Written February 8, 2024. by Paul Watters, Macquarie University, Joel Scanlan, University of Tasmania
