Celebrity Nude Photos and Videos Malicious Links to Malware
Online users, especially users of the Google Chrome web browser, if you see links promising nude celebrity photos or videos of Jessica Alba and other celebrities, do not click on them. This is because cybercriminals are using those links in an attempt to trick online users into downloading malware that will infect their computers with ransomware, spyware, viruses, Trojan horse and other malicious software that will steal their personal and financial information, or make their files unreadable and demand a ransom to make them readable again.
How the Malicious Celebrities Nude Photos or Videos Links Work?
According to researchers at Cyren, a cloud-based security solutions provider, this is how the malicious Jessica Alba links work:
If the user is using Google Chrome, the link opened is "hxxps://rb-xxxxxx.xxx/gxxxxo.php"and shows a phony YouTube site. Clicking the play button brings up a pop-up window inviting the user to install a Google Chrome extension.
After installing that extension, the browser opens up a Facebook.com login page. The extension is able to read the user’s friend list, Facebook groups, plus all personal information and upload the PDF to groups, posts, and to friends in private chat.
To summarize, this advertising campaign is able to create a sort of botnet to spread via a combination of nude celebrity pictures, a Chrome extension, and Facebook posts – which all ultimately lead to an aggressive spam/advertising page.
Facebook runs on all kinds of devices, although this malware campaign targets the Chrome web browser platform, it is not impossible for the malware writers to find ways to propagate through other browsers, as all the other browsers also have their own browser plugins/extensions.
The fact that this malicious Chrome extension was hosted in the Google Chrome Extension Store, tricks users into believing that the Chrome extension came from a trusted source/publisher and are probably safe to install. Google has removed the extension from the webstore. Cyren detects the Chrome extension scripts as, JS/Vekikrom.A!Eldorado for ba.ph and JS/Vekikrom.A1!Eldorado for main.php and background.js as JS/Agent.XL.
How to Remove the Malicious Chrome Extension?
We recommend that online users use a program called AdwCleaner to remove the malicious Chrome extension. Click here for instructions on how to use this program. If AdwCleaner doesn't work, infected users will have to delete the Registry key from the Registry Editor and also the folder in AppData. Please see the Registry key paths below, and removing Windows Registry key paths should only be done by tech-savvy persons.
This is the path to the Registry Editor:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Google\Chrome\Extension
This is the path to the extension folder:
C:\Users\USER\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Extensions
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Note: Some of the information in samples on this website may have been impersonated or spoofed.