Is that YouTube clip you just watched booby trapped?

Streaming malware

By John Leyden, 20th June 2007

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Video clips from YouTube might come booby-trapped with malware, security watchers warn.

A fake video file containing the Zlob Trojan has been planted on the video-sharing site. If selected, the Trojan bombards infected users with ads. It might also be used to upload other forms of malware onto compromised PCs.

According to the California IT security firm Secure Computing, a lack of adequate content filtering by the Google subsidiary is exposing users to malware. "No one expects to find malware hidden in YouTube files," said Secure Computing's Paul Henry. "Yet the medium's popularity is highly alluring as a mass distribution vehicle for malicious code. What's alarming is that - from a security perspective - many users and organisations will be blindsided and potentially seriously exposed."

"Most of the leading firewalls are configured only to protect internal web servers, and not capable of blocking returned web code from external servers - which is the trend and certainly the direction this threat takes," he added.

Month of YouTube bugs

Separately, a white hat hacker complains about a lack of response from YouTube / Google developers after he warned them about security issues involving the site. Cross-site scripting vulns are among the unspecified vulnerabilities. The frustrated hacker says he is prepared to create a Day Of YouTube Bugs site where he'll release one or more vulnerabilities each hour - unless YouTube developers get in touch.

It's unclear if the vulnerabilities discussed on the sla.ckers.org forum are in any way related to the fake video malware threat. ®

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