Worm targets Real Media files

McAfee warns of dangerous movies and music.

Researchers at McAfee's Avert Labs have warned of a new worm, dubbed 'W32/Realor', which doctors the contents of Real Media files (.rmvb) to redirect users to potentially dangerous URLs.

The worm does not 'infect' the media files in the standard sense, but instead manipulates the functionality of Real players to redirect anyone trying to view the files to a website, generally one containing an exploit enabling drive-by downloads. From there further copies of the worm or other malware can be installed to vulnerable systems.

'As Avert researchers point out, the main danger of this worm lies in the public's general assumption of safety when handling media files,' said John Hawes, Technical Consultant at Virus Bulletin. 'With the popularity of public-access media sites like YouTube, all media formats are becoming popular targets for malware exploitation, from both technical and social-engineering angles. Hopefully people's trust in these formats is being eroded, and they'll soon be treated like anything we get from the web should be - a potential danger until proven otherwise.'

A McAfee blog entry on the discoveries is here, with more in-depth analysis of the worm here.

17 November 2006

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