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View Full Version : Curious about a weird website



Vostrocity
July 4th, 2009, 04:51 AM
*Don't click on links if you're on Windows

Chicago's 4th of July fireworks just finished but I didn't watch it on TV so I went over to YouTube to see if anyone had it uploaded already. [link (http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=chicago+fireworks+2009&search_type=&aq=f)] Well the results were interesting. The top four results all claim their video was removed for copyright and point you to a weird link like this "http://niv.0wned.pl/chicagof12/" which then redirects you to a url like xxxxx.watch-hd.com (all of the videos redirect you to a different subdomain of watch-hd.com). The different subdomains are all the same page, which happens to be a stock Wordpress template with dummy links and a non-working YouTube player. Clicking on the non-working YouTube player then links you to another page with a working YouTube embed player that plays a video of fireworks. But then clicking on that player gets you to a legit YouTube page with the actual video that turns out to not have anything to do with the first four uploaders. I also checked watch-hd.com and all it does is redirect to Google. The whois lookup for it points it to a company in Kiev, UA. Googling watch-hd.com doesn't turn up anything related. Anyone figure it out what this is about? Weird stuff like this always interests me.
:-D

jpmelos
July 4th, 2009, 04:56 AM
There must be a virus/trojan/etc going in your computer during the process to reach the video you wanted to see. But as we are using Ubuntu, we won't even notice it.

Gizenshya
July 4th, 2009, 05:00 AM
the video wasn't removed. It was added before the fireworks even started, apparently. That is just text over the video, which is easy to do. They just wanted to catch people searching for that after the fact, and wanted to be there first.

good idea.

but it should be reported...

Vostrocity
July 4th, 2009, 07:37 AM
No no I realize that it's obviously just a scam to get people to go to the linked site, but why? They took all the effort to make YouTube accounts and upload bogus videos just so people will go to a site that doesn't do anything.

The Toxic Mite
July 4th, 2009, 08:09 AM
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1203317

Vostrocity
July 4th, 2009, 09:31 AM
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1203317

Wow awesome find! Didn't expect this to be a big plot. Well I flagged the videos already. Luckily I was on Ubuntu rather than Windows. :p