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Today on my blog a spam comment appeared. I noticed a Youtube link being in the spam comment, which I found to be rather odd as no other link was distributed. I opened the link in a sandbox environment and it turned out to download a flash file of some sort, which seemed rather strange to me considering the url is a legit Youtube link as far as I can see:

The following link should be considered unsafe until otherwise proven!

m <DOT> youtube <DOT> com/e/7wQ-hZEVLeY

I tested the file using virustotal.com but not even a single anti-virus program flagged the file as being malicious.

I have a hard time believing that a spam comment was made containing only a single link, which downloads a flash file is not malicious so I am seeking assistence here to what the file actually is, if it should be considered malware and how it is possible to use Youtube to distribute this file. I am especially interested in that last question.

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    I am actually interested as well, that does not look like anything suspicious, well, the domain isn't, I can't see a reason why would they do that unless you redirect that link to your website somehow and then execute a flash download.... Would like to hear experts opinions on this topic
    – Josh Ross
    Aug 1, 2017 at 8:10

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Okay so it turned out to be an attempt to embed the video into the comment section of the blog. The link that was in there is the flash object of the video, so it is not malicious.

Apparently there is some sort of new spamming campaign as searching for the strings used in the spam message returns more of the same, although not working quite so well as they did not include the link in their message but rather as their website, which makes their username redirect to the flash file instead of embedding it on the page itself.

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