Illegal content on YouTube? Beware spammed-out malware attack

Filed Under: Malware, Spam

Youtube malwareInternet users are being warned about a malware attack that has been spammed out widely, posing as a communication from YouTube about copyrighted video content.

The emails, which have the subject line "Your video may have illegal content", pretend to come from Google's YouTube team.

Here's an example:

Malicious email, claiming to come from Google regarding illegal YouTube content

Subject: Your video may have illegal content
Attached file: Content_ID755658_Matches.zip

Message body:
Your video may have content that is owned or licensed by Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society.

No action is required on your part; however, if you are interested in learning how this affects your video, please open attached file with Content ID Matches section of your account for more information.

Sincerely,
- The YouTube Team

The attached ZIP file, however, contains the Troj/Agent-XXC Trojan horse.

Sophos anti-virus products have been capable of detecting the malware since September 25th - but users of products from other vendors may not be as well protected.

Always be suspicious of unsolicited emails - and don't rush to click on unexpected attachments.

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3 Responses to Illegal content on YouTube? Beware spammed-out malware attack

  1. Jack says:

    "Music Publishing Rights Collection Society"

    There's your clue that this is BS. No further reading required.

  2. - says:

    Check the language also: most of these scams' structure of the words is quite off.
    In the above, it ought to be "the attachment" not attachment

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About the author

Graham Cluley has worked in the computer security industry for more than 20 years, developing anti-virus software and doing quite a lot of talking about internet threats. He's won awards for his blogging, but is proudest of the text adventure games he wrote when he was still wearing short trousers. You can learn more about those (the games, not the trousers) at grahamcluley.com. Send Graham an email, subscribe to his updates on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and App.net, and circle him on Google Plus for regular updates.