Malware increases 400 percent on Digg and Youtube
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Panda Security has determined users who regularly visit the sites Digg and Youtube have been duped into clicking on malicious links claiming to host pornographic videos of celebrities.
If clicked, the user is redirected to a page that urges them to download a codec to view the video, an adware called VideoPlay, which is a worm that will steal email login information and other sensitive data stored in a user's browser as well as exploring various removable drives connected with the machine.
According to the firm, the adware infection increased 400 percent between January and February.
The file reportedly spreads by making copies of itself on removable drives and creates an autorun.inf that initiates once the drives are accessed. This allows the malicious worm to grab cookies, passwords and profiles, and sends them to a remote account.
Some of the fake video titles associated with this worm have included Jessica Simpson Hotel Sex Tape and Megan Fox naked.
One video title, Christian Bale freak out dubbed with video, may be a reason for the rise in infection rates as it was popular celebrity gossip on the internet when news broke of the actor's profanity-laden outburst while on a movie set.
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