Tag Archives: YouTube

Cybercriminals release automatic CAPTCHA-solving bogus Youtube account generating tool

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By Dancho Danchev

For years, thanks to the currently mature human-driven ecosystem offering CAPTCHA-solving as a service, cybercriminals have been persistently and automatically abusing major Web properties by undermining the “chain of trust” that these properties rely on so extensively.

Still living in a world supposedly dominated by malware-infected bots, this myopia has resulted in the rise of these managed services, rendering any recent CAPTCHA “innovations” useless since they continue relying on humans – the very species that CAPTCHA is supposed to be recognizable by in the first place.

Just how easy is it to automatically register tens of thousands of bogus accounts at, let’s say, YouTube? In this post I’ll profile a recently released tool that’s relying on API keys offered by a CAPTCHA-solving services, automating the account registration process in combination with the use of malware-infected hosts as proxies.

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‘Your video may have illegal content’ themed emails serve malware

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By Dancho Danchev

Cybercriminals are currently spamvertising millions of emails impersonating Google’s YouTube team, in an attempt to  trick end and corporate users into executing the malicious attachment found in the email. Upon execution, the samples opens a backdoor on the affected host, allowing full access to the targeted host by the cybercriminals behind the campaign.

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Spamvertised ‘YouTube Video Approved’ and ‘Twitter Support” themed emails lead to pharmaceutical scams

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By Dancho Danchev

Just like true marketers interested in improving the click-through rates of their campaign, pharmaceutical scammers are constantly looking for new ways to attract traffic to their fraudulent sites.

From compromised web shells on web sites with high page rank, the impersonation of legitimate brands, to the development of co-branding campaigns, pharmaceutical scammers persistently rotate the traffic acquisition tactics in an attempt to trick more end users into purchasing their counterfeit pharmaceutical items.

In this post, I’ll profile two currently spamvertised campaigns impersonating YouTube and Twitter, ultimately redirecting end users to pharmaceutical scams.

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How cybercriminals monetize malware-infected hosts

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By Dancho Danchev

The vibrant cybercrime underground ecosystem offers countless ways to monetize the malware-infected hosts at the disposal of the malicious attacker.

From converting them to anonymization proxies assisting cybercriminals in covering their Web activities, to launching DDoS attacks, and using them to disseminate spam and more malicious threats, cybercriminals have a vast arsenal of monetization tactics in their arsenal.

In this post we’ll profile a recently advertised service offering thousands of Facebook “Likes”, Twitter followers, and YouTube views, all for the modest price of a couple of hundred rubles, entirely relying on malware-infected hosts for supporting their infrastructure.

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Spammed YouTube Comments Promote Adware – Successfully

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(Update, July 11, 2011:  On May 25, 2011, we were contacted by representatives of Future Ads, LLC, the parent company of both Playsushi and Gamevance.  Future Ads informed us that they, too, had been victims of a scam perpetrated by rogue affiliates who seemed to be involved with the malicious campaigns we described in this post.  Future Ads claims that it has taken action to prevent this type of abuse from happening in the future.)

By Curtis Fechner and Andrew Brandt

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I was poking around at the end of the work day last week, checking out the newly-released trailer for X-Men: First Class. But something in the comments caught my eye: The two highest-rated commenters don’t appear to be human. Their messages invite readers (using some goofily accented characters) to visit a profile and see the whole movie.

I’m sure the film’s director, Matthew Vaughn, would also love to see that, especially because he may not have finished shooting the movie yet. And, of course I wanted to see just how they’d manage to get  “this entîre leekêd-movìe” or “the complête leekêd-film” in their user channel, given the absence of a completed film, let alone YouTube’s limits on video length.

When I click through to the profile, it suddenly makes sense. The profile links to an outside site where (the profile’s owner claims) you can watch the full movie. It only took 13 thumbs-up clicks on those comments to make those comments the most popular, but a real user isn’t going to ‘like’ glaringly obvious comment spam. The comments are probably being boosted by the spammers themselves. With just under 7 million page views, this is apparently an effective scam. Not good!

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