A few months ago, we talked about YouTube's Annotations feature being used as a tool for Cyber Criminals to help spread their malicious Rogueware campaigns. Today, we have a similar case, but this time its automated comment Malspam (Malware spam). My initial search turned up about 30,000 malspam comments all pointing to a fake pornography website called "PornTube 2.0".
Like the last time, Cyber Criminals are targeting people who are searching YouTube for pornography. In the comments each malicious link is accompanied by a few search terms. Some common keywords we have seen are Adalt (sic), Tit s, Latina, Kinky, Girl, Porn, Sex, and the names of various pornography stars.
By targeting these keywords the Cyber Criminals are able to optimize and improve their success rates by infecting those who are truly looking for pornographic material.
Note: It appears that all of the malicious links have brackets in between the " .com" portion of the comment. It's unclear if this is a temporary action done by the YouTube abuse team or if the criminals are just trying to evade detection.
Upon arriving at the website, we see a page that looks like a legitimate video website labeled "PornTube 2.0", but it is actually the malware site.
Malware Site:
Click for the original uncensored image (Warning: NSFW)
If you click anything on the website it will prompt you to download a fake Adobe Flash plugin, which is the malware installer for Adware/Privacy Center
Click for the original uncensored image (Warning: NSFW)
Adware/PrivacyCenter Rogue (fake) Antivirus
Rogue Antivirus is one of the most prolific Malware in the threat landscape today. PandaLabs has received more Rogue Antivirus samples in Q1 of 2009 than in all of 2008 as demonstrated by the following illustration.
In this case, Cyber Criminals aim to profit from human vulnerabilities and inherent curiosities.