Aquaman may already be the King of the Seas and Ruler of Atlantis, but now he has a new title: Most Toxic Superhero on the Internet!  The firm Intel Security examined a selection of Marvel and DC’s most popular characters to determine which elicited the most viruses, malware and inappropriate content a user searched their name.  The company calculated the percentage of spyware, adware, spam, phishing, viruses and other malware that resulted from clicking on a related link.

The firm attributes superheroes’ popularity as the reason cybercriminals use them to trick users into accidentally downloading harmful software.  There doesn’t seem to be any reasoning behind why certain characters, like Aquaman, are selected.  Last year, Superman held the “honor” but this year, the Man of Steel doesn’t even rank in the Top 10.

Aquaman scored an even 20% of the results to take the top slot, but Marvel’s Iron Fist was hot on his finned heels with 19.69%.  Talk about an even odder selection than Aquaman!  Iron Fist is hardly a superstar, although he will be getting a Netflix series but not until next year.  There’s really no logical reason why he’d score so highly above everyone else.

One would naturally assume that these hackers would use the biggest name characters as bait, i.e. the ones with big budget movies, but that isn’t necessarily the case.  Iron Man, The Hulk and Wolverine did tie for the third slot, but Captain America, Thor etc. didn’t rank.  Doctor Strange has a movie on the way, so many fans are busy looking up news on that project, but Ant-Man’s debuts within weeks and he was nowhere to be seen.  And Daredevil had the first Marvel Netflix series, which received rave reviews.  Both Strange and DD also tied for third place, along with household name Wonder Woman, who will be appearing in the highly scrutinized ‘Batman V Superman’ next year.  All seven of these characters scored 18.85%.

Rounding out the Top 10 were Catwoman, Green Lantern and Batman.

Also not ranking were Green Arrow and The Flash, despite their hit TV shows.  I guess Netflix really is the way of the future!

So make sure your security systems are updated.  Who knew these heroes of justice were being used by evil doers?  I guess you can’t trust anyone… at least not on the Internet!

Source: Newsarama