Storm Deep uses YouTube to spread

YouTube's 'invite friends to watch videos' feature recently has been used by spammers to spread spam with dangerous "worm" implants.

Bradley Anstis, director of product management at security firm Marshal, said the feature allows spammer to send spam to any email address and carries YouTube's addressing message.

So far, Marshal has detected a total of 150,000 emails sent from YouTube accounts. The actual number spread on the Internet can be much higher. If a user clicks on the link attached to their PC's emails, they will immediately be infected with the dangerous worm Storm. This is a computer worm that specializes in spamming and kidnapping PC users for other purposes of hackers .

Anstis said hackers took advantage of a security vulnerability that arises during the login process of a YouTube account. This error is similar to the bug that was discovered on Hotmail and Gmail, once exploited by hackers to create a trojan that can automatically generate hundreds of thousands of email accounts.

The YouTube Help Center recommends that users exclude emails sent from service@youtube.com - this is the most frequently used address by spammers.

Hoang Dung