‘Video Update Recommended’ Pop-Up

The 'Video Update Recommended' pop-up is an online tactic that's a cover for a classic drive-by-download attack, thereby infecting vulnerable PCs with threats. The 'Video Update Recommended' pop-up, like any similar drive-by-download pop-up, prefers to mislead victims into harming their own PCs with fake update downloads, but the 'Video Update Recommended' pop-up may also include other methods of installing its payloads that don't require your consent. Because of this hazard and the fact that malware experts often correlate these attacks with high-level PC threats, even the smallest contact with a 'Video Update Recommended' pop-up may be considered a reason to scan your PC with anti-malware equipment immediately.

The Video Update that Takes You to See All Kinds of PC Problems

Like the 'Please Update Player' pop-up or the 'Flash Player Update' pop-up, the 'Video Update Recommended' pop-up is a corrupted pop-up meant to waylay you into infecting your PC with harmful or merely unwanted software. Unlike these similar drive-by-download attacks, the 'Video Update Recommended' pop-up takes a midway point between explicitly identifying its software and ignoring brand names; the 'Video Update Recommended' pop-up makes references to a known codec package, but doesn't describe its contents in great detail. For threat-distributing criminals, the 'Video Update Recommended' pop-up's format could be a smart move, with many PC users uncomfortable with managing their codecs, having trained themselves to install patches without much thought.

Such a victim who keeps to that careless mindset will discover the same thing as malware analysts: that the 'Video Update Recommended' pop-up doesn't include a real codec update, and, instead, installs potentially harmful software. A payload form a 'Video Update Recommended' pop-up may be a source of stolen information, backdoor vulnerabilities that turn your PC over to criminal control or a complete system lockdown from a Windows locker Trojan. Even refusing the 'Video Update Recommended' pop-up's update isn't a certain defense; many sites that use these kinds of social engineering-based attacks also may use exploit kits to install threats.

Getting Back to a Safe PC Cinema

Installing a 'Video Update Recommended' pop-up's fake update is roughly equivalent to purchasing a television-shaped box with unknown contents to 'upgrade' your living room TV. Refusing the 'Video Update Recommended' pop-up, and any similar updates from unsafe sources, always should be your default response, which can be followed by disinfecting any automatically installed threat with anti-malware tools. The 'Video Update Recommended' pop-up is most likely to appear on corrupted or illegal sites that claim to host media content, such as streaming movies, but also may be seen in other circumstances.

The PC threats installed through a 'Video Update Recommended' pop-up may display very obvious symptoms, but aren't required to do so. An absence of appropriate anti-malware tools may make it very hard, almost impossible, to detect any threat installed by a 'Video Update Recommended' pop-up (or other drive-by-download). While keeping your codecs updated is recommended and, in many cases, very necessary, you never should let the desire to install a patch override your common sense about downloading suspicious files from sites that may mislead you.

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