Malicious advertisements have popped up on websites such as YouTube, Amazon and Yahoo, part of a sophisticated campaign to spread malware, Cisco said Monday.
When encountered, the malicious advertisements cause a person to be redirected to a different website, which triggers a download based on whether the computer is running Windows or Apple’s OS X, wrote Armin Pelkmann, a threat researcher.
Popular YouTube user Michelle Phan is being sued for alleged copyright infringement on songs she has used in her videos, according to reports from the BBC. Ultra Records claims that Phan has used 50 of its songs in her YouTube posts and on her website illegally despite one of the label's own artists objecting to the legal action.
Phan's YouTube channel centers around using and buying makeup, and her videos are often backed by upbeat music with the artist credited in the video's description. Artists whom Phan has used in her videos include Kaskade, deadmau5, and Calvin Harris.
The $US43 billion online-advertising industry built by companies such as Yahoo and Google is jeopardising consumer privacy and giving hackers an easy path to infect computers, a US congressional investigation has found.
Now, armed with a better understanding of the opaque mechanics of web ads, Senator Carl Levin and other lawmakers are asking whether stricter rules are needed to protect consumers, setting up a battle with companies that shaped the internet.
Google’s YouTube has reached a deal to buy Twitch, a popular videogame-streaming company, for more than $1 billion, according to sources familiar with the pact.
The deal, in an all-cash offer, is expected to be announced imminently, sources said. If completed the acquisition would be the most significant in the history of YouTube, which Google acquired in 2006 for $1.65 billion. The impending acquisition comes after longtime Google ad exec Susan Wojcicki was named CEO of YouTube earlier this year. Reps for YouTube and Twitch declined to comment.
Reports are circulating that Yahoo is looking to launch a video site that would go up against Google's behemoth YouTube.
The rumors largely stem from a Re/Code report late last week that cited anonymous sources saying Yahoo is looking to not only launch a YouTube competitor in the next few months but also is trying to pluck some of the video-sharing site's stars and favorite networks.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday denounced as "villainous" the leaking of a recording of top security officials discussing possible military action in Syria to the video-sharing site YouTube.
Turkish authorities ordered the shutdown of the site.
Recent YouTube visitors should be extra vigilant after ads on the website were found to be poisoned.
According to researchers at Bromium Labs, who blogged about the threat on Friday, YouTube's ad network was compromised to host the Styx exploit kit.
The kit, which in recent news was pegged as compromising online retailer Hasbro.com, was leveraged to spread a nasty banking trojan, called Caphaw, to users. The Styx exploit kit spread the malware by taking advantage of a Java vulnerability (CVE-2013-2460), which was patched last year.
The security firm Spider.io revealed that a California-based company called Sambreel was using its software to inject advertisements on YouTube, according to a report on the company’s website. Sambreel’s subsidiary Yontoo was responsible for two programs designed to make downloading videos off of YouTube simple, both of which have been pulled after Spider.io revealed its findings.
The world is turning to YouTube to watch Felix Baumgartner's daring stratospheric skydive this morning.
At last count, the video-sharing site's live stream of the high-altitude jump had attracted more than 7.2 million viewers. They are currently watching the last stages of egress before Baumgartner jumps from approximately 128,000 feet.
Baumgartner is attempting to set four records: the fastest freefall (an unprecedented Mach 1), the longest sustained freefall, a free fall from the highest-ever starting point, and the highest ascent in a manned balloon.
Google-owned YouTube on Thursday corrected a statement it made the day before, and now says the company will not manually review copyright-infringement claims before its system automatically blocks disputed footage.
The mishap occurred when Thabet Alfishawi, rights management product manager for YouTube, wrote in a YouTube blog post: “We’ve improved the algorithms that identify potentially invalid claims. We stop these claims from automatically affecting user videos and place them in a queue to be manually reviewed.”
