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Hackers using fake YouTube pages

by on10 October 2008

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Beware the clips that bite, the claws that rend


Trend Micro
has warned that hackers are using fake YouTube pages to trick people into opening malware.

Trend Micro software threat research manager, Jamz Yaneza, told AFP that hacking tools were appearing all over the worldwide Web for Youtube, MySpace, Facebook, and AOL messaging.

Yaneza claimed that all the social notworking sites have been hit with some page or another. The YouTube attack involves sending victims what are said to be must-see snippets at the Google-owned video-sharing Website.

The links connect to convincingly realistic replicas of YouTube pages and tell people that a software update is needed to view a requested video. The dodgy software is in the so-called software update.

What is clever about the tools is that the victim does not know that they have been had, as the hackers' software is able to stealthily link to the real YouTube Website and play a promised video. The only real clue is that there is something unusual about the "URL," of a bogus page.

Hackers like using YouTube as the bait at the moment because the site is being hit hard as people look up footage of the U.S. elections.
Last modified on 11 October 2008
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