Spam News

Now showing: Spam video messages via YouTube

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Spammers from Russia recently began using Google's free video service YouTube to record spam messages linked to in emails, which security researchers at Kaspersky Lab said is the first use of video spam.

Kaspersky said last week that its Content Filtering Research group discovered a mass mailing that contained a link directing users to a YouTube video advertising a Russian real estate scam.

The company said it forecast the potential for this kind of abuse of YouTube back in 2007, but this is the first time Kaspersky researchers have detected a mass mailing specifically intended to make users view an advertising video.

"Naturally, this type of advertising is more interesting and gets more hits," said Darya Gudkova at Kaspersky Lab. "Two years ago spammers used the YouTube name and the promise of interesting videos to lure users to advertising sites. Now the links really do lead to this popular video hosting site which is being used to store unsolicited advertising content."

Earlier this year, web security researchers discovered 30,000 videos on YouTube that had been tainted with malicious comments by cybercriminals. The comments contained links claiming to offer adult videos, but visitors to the video-hosting sites would be asked to download a file containing Trojan malware.