YouTube hit by porn storm
Pre-teen viewers get nasty surprise.
By Maxwell Cooter | Techworld | Published: 14:35, 22 May 2009
YouTube users looking for videos for current pre-teen favourites Hannah Montana and Jonas Brothers got a nasty surprise.The Google-owned video sharing site had been hit by some 5,000 videos from Japanese bulletin board 4Chan.
According to a BBC report, one 4Chan member said that the attack had been planned because of YouTube's stance on music. Flonty, said "I did it because YouTube keeps deleting music. It was part of a 4Chan raid."
However, according to Panda Security, there was a financial advantage too. The company said there were 4,900 offending videos on YouTube each containing links to a web pages designed to download malware. The comments suggest that that the users are being taken to a legal web page, albeit with pornographic content. In fact, when users click the link they're taken to a page that spoofs the original and which is really designed to download malware.
This malware, when run on a computer, pretends to scan the system, supposedly detecting dozens of (non-existent) viruses and offers users the chance to buy the paid version of the anti-virus to clean their computers.
"The technique of using malicious comments on YouTube is not new in itself. What is alarming however, is the quantity of links we have detected pointing to the same web page. This suggests that cyber-criminals are using automated tools to publish these comments", explains Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs.
Whatever the reason, Google has acted quickly and removed the offending material - although the company has warned that one or two might be left behind. The company has said that 20 hours of video are added to the site every minute so it's got its work cut out keeping tabs on all of the offending material.
