Hackers Lure PC Victims With Fake YouTube Videos

[Purveyor]

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Vanity and lust are proving to be deadly sins for some Internet users.

A hacker group known as "Storm Botnet" over the weekend began flooding the Internet with emails, inviting Web users to watch a salacious video starring them on YouTube, the video-sharing site owned by Google Inc. (GOOG). One such email is headlined "OMG, what are you thinking," and reads: "this i not good. If this video gets to her husband your both dead. see for yourself..." It then provides a link to a purported video.

However, links in the emails actually point to attacker-operated sites that try to download several malicious programs onto vulnerable personal computers, according to Roger Thompson, chief technical officer at Exploit Prevention Labs, a New Kingstown, Pa., security company.

"Everybody thinks a YouTube video is perfectly safe, and in reality it is," Thompson said. "You're not actually getting to YouTube."

Once infected, victim PCs become spam machines, "zombies" that Storm Botnet can use to attack others on the Internet with floods of traffic, and Web servers that further distribute the group's malicious programs to other PCs. The attackers also plant a rootkit in victim PCs that tries to hide the malicious programs so antivirus software can't remove them. Exploit Prevention Labs' LinkScanner product protects against the threat, and the company provides free online checks of suspect links at http://linkscanner.explabs.com/linkscanner/ default.asp.

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http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200708271841DOWJONESDJONLINE000345_FORTUNE5.htm

[Purveyor]

1. I received 2 emails with this bogus youtube link.

One has a subject of "if your wife sees this video, she'll divorce you". 1st clue, I'm not married.

Other one similar subject line but it was "your mom will kill you".

Just be on the lookout for these emails.

[B3Nut]

5. I could never get the fake links to work in testing on my VM

I've been trying to infect a virtual machine for quite a while now, just for something interesting to do. The bogus URLs actually point at an IP address, usually of an infected machine on a home cable or DSL connection. If that user's zombie PC is powered off, the link won't work.

The minute I saw the first of this kind of email I figured it was a virus/trojan horse social-engineering trick. But I'm a jaded IT mook, I see a fair bit of this garbage. I'd love to see virus writers pilloried in public and pelted with overripe tomatoes, but that's me...

Todd in Cheesecurdistan

[Cabcere]

2. Yeah, I've gotten a ton of these on my school e-mail account.

Delete, delete, delete is the name of the game...

[peacetalksforall]

3. I get plenty of spam that starts OMG - when I see the three alphas

on DU - I tense up.

[hobbit709]

4. ANYTHING I get from someone I don't know

is already suspect. But I wonder how many fools with guilty consciences click on the link.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

6. I saw an interesting news story about this.

The story's hear:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU

[zbdent]

7. wanna bet a bunch of Repukes call customer service trying to get

their PCs fixed because of this?

Oh, wait ... "If this video gets to HER husband ..."

Never mind ...