Techonolgy articles

Fake YouTube pages used to spread viruses (AP)

Posted on Wed Oct 8, 2008 4:48PM EDT

SAN FRANCISCO - Savvy Internet users know that downloading unsolicited computer programs is one of the most dangerous things you can do online. It puts you at great risk for a virus or another time bomb from a hacker. But even some sophisticated surfers could get taken in by a sneaky new attack in which criminals create fake YouTube pages — dead-on replicas of the real site — to push their malicious software and make it look like it's safe stuff coming from a trusted source.

A program circulating online helps hackers build those fake pages. Users who follow an e-mail pointing them to one of the pages would see an error message that claims the video they want won't play without installing new software first. That error message includes a link the hacker has provided to a malicious program, which delivers a virus. Even worse: once the computer is infected, it's simple for the hacker to silently redirect the victims to a real YouTube page to see videos they were hoping to see — and hide the crime. "It's spot-on accurate, and that is scary," said Jamz Yaneza, threat research manager for security software company Trend Micro Inc. "If I were watching YouTube videos all day I would probably click on this one."

The tactic itself isn't new: There's a constant push by criminals to build more convincing spoofs of legitimate sites to trick people into downloading harmful software. And the latest attacks don't target any vulnerability in the YouTube site. But it highlights the fact that criminals are getting better at creating bogus sites and developing so-called "social engineering" methods to fool people. Fortunately, truly alert Internet users can still see the telltale warning signs with the fake YouTube pages. For one, the Web browser won't show the real YouTube's Internet address. And to even see the malicious page, you have to first follow a link that's sent to you, which is often a tip-off that you should independently verify whether the site is legitimate.

yea its those russians i hear that are good at those hacking and viruses. they make virtually exact replicas of popular websites or even bank websites that get you to enter your personal information.
3 months ago, our computer got infected from an email or sumthing(dont ask), and popups kept showing up on my families computer trying to sell antivirus hardware. so we clicked on the popup and it acted like it was scanning for viruses, but the popup was the virus infecting all our files. it tricked us bad, and these hackers are gettin smart as hell. so we got norton XD and it went away after a GEEK squad dude came over lolz

Yeah I saw this on the news...not liking this...lol

It's not like is very new. Never, and I mean never install an ActiveX plugin or something similar similar from an unknown source. Although they have disguised it a bit better, it should send automatic flags up when a video website asks you to install anything other than Flash 10 to view a video.

Yeah, happened to me once.

Clicked before I realized what I was doing. Ran a virus scan right after, over 100 infected files >___>.

Never gonna get me with that again though.

O_O;;; over 100..wow oi no where is safe on the Internet DX

Yeah, and I only have like 200k files on this computer, I think.

And every virus got its separate popup notification when identified.

I went to get some cookies from the kitchen, came back and was just like 'o______o' because all I saw covering the whole screen was virus identification notifications.

wow..thats alot...btw what kinda cookie?