Hackers hit Dailymotion with malware, leaving viewers vulnerable

Published July 7, 2014 1:13pm

If you visited the video-sharing site Dailymotion from June 28 to sometime last week, better have your computers scanned for possible malware.

Hackers managed to compromise the site to infect visitors' machines by sending them to a site that downloads an exploit kit, security vendor Symantec said.

"This exploit kit takes advantage of vulnerabilities in Java, Internet Explorer, and Flash Player. If the vulnerabilities were successfully exploited during the campaign, pay-per-click malware was then downloaded on the victim’s computer," Symantec researcher Ankit Singh said in a blog post.

Singh said that as of July 3, the compromise redirecting visitors to the Sweet Orange Exploit Kit appeared to have been removed.

He said the compromising of Dailymotion aimed to target a large number of users as Dailymotion is in Alexa’s top 100 most popular websites list.

Singh said their initial finding showed the attack mainly affected Dailymotion visitors in the US and Europe.

He said the kit would download Trojan.Adclicker onto the victim’s computer. This malware forces the compromised computer to "artificially generate traffic to pay-per-click Web advertisements in order to generate revenue for the attackers."

A separate article on PC World said this was not the first time attackers targeted Dailymotion.com to distribute malware.

In January, it said security firm Invincea reported that a malicious ad on the site "attempted to trick users into installing a fake antivirus program." — Joel Locsin/TJD, GMA News

Tags: dailymotion, cybersecurity, malware