Softpedia
 

NEWS CATEGORIES:



NEWS ARCHIVE >>
SOFTPEDIA REVIEWS >>
MEET THE EDITORS >>
Home > News > Security

October 27th, 2011, 18:41 GMT · By

Emma Watson Video Hides Malicious Player

SHARE:

Adjust text size:


Emma Watson's image is used by cybercriminals
Enlarge picture
A video promising adult content that features Emma Watson, Harry Potter's wizard friend from the movie, turns out to be the source of a nasty piece of malware that looks for a way to infect our system.

Zscaler Threat Lab found the malicious link which supposedly points to a site that stores an "Emma Watson never seen before home video."

Hosted mainly on Russian domains such as strongrzholder.rr.nu or smartutnetwork.rr.nu, the page looks very much like a legitimate Youtube page, its center being occupied by a picture of the celebrity.

To make the whole thing look more realistic, the mastermind of the operation placed a lot of comments under the clip that seem to come from users who already took a peek.

Once the Play button is hit, the site warns you of an out of date Flash player which needs to be updated in order to view the footage.

The Adobe Flash Player download window is also perfectly replicated to make the scheme more trustworthy but it's only a browser pop-up that leads to the actual perpetrator, which in this case is represented by a Trojan.

A scandisk.exe file is what holds the malevolent element which at the time of the discovery was correctly identified only by 7 out of 42 vendors.

Adult videos that allegedly feature celebrities are a good way for cybercriminals to spread their infections and that's why you must be cautious when faced with such offers.

The conclusion we can draw from this situation is that media content that requires additional downloads will in most cases turn out to be some sort of Internet threat. If you actually need a certain player or a codec, make sure to procure it only from the vendor or from other trusted websites.

Sophisticated pages with a complex design can easily dupe the average internaut into believing it actually contains what it promises.

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK:

6,671 hits · 3 comments · Link to this article · Print article · Send to friend · Subscribe to news

MUST-READ RELATED ARTICLES:


Internet Explorer Malware Plugin Also Infects Firefox

Security Update for Adobe Flash Player 10.3

Windows Malware Infections Result from Outdated Software

READER COMMENTS:


Comment #1 by: brog on 07 Dec 2011, 01:53 UTC reply to this comment

almost got caught by that...clicked cancel, then when it had the pop up asking if i really wanted to navigate away i knew that it was a fraud video


Comment #2 by: Lawlite on 17 Mar 2012, 07:20 UTC reply to this comment

it is true i had to reinstal my windows because of it


Comment #3 by: Mike on 07 May 2012, 05:35 UTC reply to this comment

it shows up as a traffic source for my blog page. i click it and there it is. i was just wanting to see who or what was sending viewers to my blogger...should i get something to protect my pages? i knew my flash player was updated so i did not click it to run or play. i had a virus exploiter that i cleaned shortly after creating my blog. is there more than meets the eye here?

Copyright © 2001-2012 Softpedia. Contact/Tip us at

WindowsGamesDriversMacLinuxScriptsMobileHandheldNews

SUBMIT PROGRAM   |   ADVERTISE   |   GET HELP   |   SEND US FEEDBACK   |   RSS FEEDS   |   UPDATE YOUR SOFTWARE   |   ROMANIAN FORUM