200 Million Downloaded video players including VLC Player are vulnerable to Malicious subtitles Attack -A Complete Takeover Attack

A new Cyber Attack Spreading through Vulnerable Subtitles which Downloaded by  Victims Media Player and threatens more than 200 Millions of vulnerable Machine in worldwide which leads to  complete take over to the infected machine .

This cyber attack is delivered when movie subtitles are loaded by the user’s media player which is  delivering by tricks victims.

Attackers  used two Major Attack Vectors to spreading crafting malicious subtitle files into Victims Media Player.

1. Attackers Forced victims to Visit Malicious Website to Download Subtitles
2. Tricks victims   into running a malicious file on his computer.

Vulnerable  Media Players are wildly used Media players including VLC, Kodi, Popcorn Time and Stremio.

Currently this Malicious subtitles repositories are Treated as Trusted Source by the Vulnerable Media Players.

According  to Checkpoint Researchers, This method requires little or no deliberate action on the part of the user, making it all the more dangerous.

Also Researchers Said,Unlike traditional attack vectors, which security firms and users are widely aware of, movie subtitles are perceived as nothing more than benign text files. This means users, Anti-Virus software, and other security solutions vet them without trying to assess their real nature, leaving millions of users exposed to this risk.

Attack Vector used for Spreading

Many websites are serving Subtitles to Download and import into Media Players which is the potential Attack method to easily spread this Malicious Subtitles links.

Checkpoint Researchers  Revealed ,manipulating the website’s ranking algorithm, we could guarantee crafted malicious subtitles would be those automatically downloaded by the media player, allowing a hacker to take complete control over the entire subtitle supply chain, without resorting to a Man in the Middle attack or requiring user interaction.

Image source:Checkpoint

Infect into IOT Devices

This Critical subtitles Attack may perform into PC, a smart TV, devices which infected by this Malicious Subtitles .

infected Media Players VLC has over 170 million downloads of its latest version alone, which was released June 5, 2016. Kodi (XBMC) has reached over 10 million unique users per day, and nearly 40 million unique users each month.

This Attack will leads to stealing sensitive information, installing ransomware, mass Denial of Service attacks, and much more. Checkpoint said.

Proof Of Concepts Video:

Here Checkpoint Submitted a Proof of Concepts for Complete take over  of the the Victims  Machine by the attacker via the infected media Players.

Once Malicious Subtitles loaded into the Victims Media Player ,then it will execute the Remote code and take over the entire Victims Machine.

This Attack  still under investigation by Checkpoint and They didn’t revead any technical Details.

Also Read:

• Creating and Analyzing a Malicious PDF File with PDF-Parser Tool
• More Than 100 Google Play Store Apps Infected with Malicious IFrames
• Malicious Weather App Found on Google Play that Remotely lock and Unlock your Android Device