Security pros are warning that distributors of the Storm Trojan are now using a YouTube video to lure users. Contained in e-mails with subject lines such as "sheesh man what are you thinking," the malicious link claims to go to YouTube.com, but actually goes to a URL harboring exploit code. "This is the first [YouTube] lure that the Storm folks are using but not the first that has used YouTube in the past," said Dan Hubbard, vice president of security research at San Diego-based Websense. "There are a variety of e-mail subjects and bodies but basically they request you to view a video."
Dave Marcus, security research and communications manager at McAfee, based in Santa Clara, Calif., advised people to use caution when clicking on links in e-mails. Clicking on the attachment associated with this particular attack will infect the victim"s machine with the Nuwar worm, Marcus said. "Malware writers continue to use social engineering tactics to infect a user"s machine with a copy of Nuwar, this time latching on to the popularity of YouTube to lure people into clicking on the URL," he said. "We expect these spammers to continue to use these types of tactics and it will be imperative that users get educated on how to avoid becoming a victim."