Youtube as covert-channel - Control systems remotely and execute commands by uploading videos to Youtube

Overview

covert-tube

A program to control systems remotely by uploading videos to Youtube using Python to create the videos and the listener, emulating some malware I was reading about. It allows to create videos with frames formed of simple text, QR codes with cleartext or QR codes using AES encryption.

Create a video

The videos can be created using generate_video.py: enter the commands and generate the video writing "exit". The video generated is called by default output.avi (can be updated in config.py):

python3 generate_video.py

img1

Run the listener and upload the video to Youtube

python3 main.py

The listener will check the Youtube channel every 300 seconds by default (can be updated in config.py). First the video is uploaded:

img2

After finding there is a new video in the channel, it is downloaded and the commands are executed:

img3

We can see the output from the commands:

img4


Configuration

Update the config.py file:

  • channel_id (Mandatory!!!): Get your Youtube channel ID from here.

  • api_key (Mandatory!!!): To get the API key create an application and generate the key from here.

  • image_type (Optional. Default: "qr_aes"): Different types of images for the video.

    • "cleartext" creates images with the words of the commands.
    • "qr" creates QR codes with the commands.
    • "qr_aes" creates QR codes with the commands encrypted with AES.
  • upload_seconds_delay (Optional. Default: 300): Seconds delay until checking if a new video has been uploaded.

  • debug (Optional. Default: True): Print messages or not.

  • aes_key (Optional. Default: "covert-tube_2021"): Key for AES encryption, used in the "qr_aes" option.

  • generated_video_path (Optional. Default: "output.avi"): Path of video generated with generate_video.py.

  • downloaded_video_path (Optional. Default: "/tmp/test.mp4"): Path where the new video will be downloaded.

  • temp_folder (Optional. Default: "/tmp/"): Path where images of every frame from the video are stored, with the format image_X.png.

Installation

For all the project:

sudo apt install libzbar0
pip3 install Pillow opencv-python youtube_dl pytesseract pyqrcode pypng pyzbar pycrypto
git clone https://github.com/ricardojoserf/covert-tube

Creating a standalone binary

pyinstaller --onefile main.py
cp dist/main covert-tube
rm -rf dist build
rm main.spec

Motivation

Lately I have been reading about malware using Youtube for controlling their setting remotely. For example, Casbaneiro abuses YouTube to store its C&C server domains. Each video on the channels used by the threat actor contains a description and at the end of these there is a link to a bogus Facebook or Instagram url containing the C&C server domain (Welivesecurity blog). A second example is Numando, which abuses it by encrypting the data in the title of the Youtube videos (other Welivesecurity blog).

Knowing this I decided to create a PoC to test the control of remote systems uploading videos to Youtube but, instead of using the title or the description, using the content of the video. It allows to execute any command, but it could be used to change some settings remotely. So this is just a PoC, use it for educational purposes!

Add the dislike count back to my YouTube videos via a comment containing that information.

YouTube Dislikes Forrest Knight Python Version 3.0+ Only use if you know what the code actually does. I'm not responsible for your use of this code in

Forrest Knight 155 Dec 19, 2022
Stream deck using Arduino and Python

Stream deck using Arduino and Python This is a little project I started due to the fact that I wanted to stream and didn't want to spend lots on a sim

Tal Cherniavsky 2 Feb 11, 2022
Python script for extracting audio from video files and creating Mel spectrograms

video2spectrogram About This package is meant to automate the process of extracting audio files from videos and saving the plots computed from these a

Alexandros Stergiou 1 Oct 28, 2021
A wrapper around ffmpeg to make it work in a concurrent and memory-buffered fashion.

Media Fixer Have you ever had a film or TV show that your TV wasn't able to play its audio? Well this program is for you. Media Fixer is a program whi

Halit Şimşek 3 May 04, 2022
Your self hosted Youtube media server

The Tube Archivist Your self hosted Youtube media server Core functionality Subscribe to your favourite Youtube channels Download Videos using yt-dlp

Simon 2.1k Dec 31, 2022
Converts Betaflight blackbox gyro to MP4 GoPro Meta data so it can be used with ReelSteady GO

Here are a bunch of scripts that I created some time ago as a proof of concept that Betaflight blackbox gyro data can be converted to GoPro Metadata F

108 Oct 05, 2022
Python based script to operate FFMPEG.

FMPConvert Python based script to operate FFMPEG. Ver 1.0 -- 2022.02.08 Feature ✅ Maximum compatibility: Third-party dependency libraries unused ✅ Che

cybern000b 1 Feb 28, 2022
Simple VLC-based media player that can play multiple videos at the same time

Screenshots About Simple VLC-based media player that can play multiple videos at the same time. You can play as many videos as you like, the only limi

161 Jan 05, 2023
A simple Python Youtube Wachtime for YTbebot

Simple bot that was development in python 3.7, that automatically watch youtube videos. It can be used to give more views in your channel helping in the spread and increase the followers because your

Rian eka wiratma 1 Dec 05, 2021
Simple background blur for your webcam

backgroundblur Simple background blur for your webcam. This script will capture your webcams output, add a blur effect to the background and output th

Stefan Wagner 4 Dec 07, 2021
Terminal-Video-Player - A program that can display video in the terminal using ascii characters

Terminal-Video-Player - A program that can display video in the terminal using ascii characters

15 Nov 10, 2022
I have baked a custom integration to control Eufy Security Cameras and access RTSP and P2P stream if possible.

I have baked a custom integration to control Eufy Security Cameras and access RTSP (real time streaming protocol) and P2P (peer to peer) stream if pos

Fuat Akgün 422 Jan 01, 2023
Komposition - The video editor built for screencasters

Komposition The video editor built for screencasters Tutorial Video | Introduction | Installation Documentation See the documentation and user guide.

Oskar Wickström 428 Jan 08, 2023
This application makes a webrtc video call with jitsi meet signaling

gstreamer-jitsi-meet This application makes a webrtc video call with jitsi meet signaling. Other end can be any jitsi meet app or web app. It doesn't

Linh 7 Apr 26, 2022
Cvplayer - A simple video player written in python using ffpyplayer and OpenCV

Video Player cvplayer is a minimal wrapper around the ffpyplayer.MediaPlayer cla

ADI 7 Dec 19, 2022
Become a virtual character with just your webcam!

Become a virtual character with just your webcam!

Rich 300 Jan 03, 2023
A telegram bot for compressing/encoding videos in h264 format.

Video-Encoder-Bot a telegram bot for compressing/encoding videos in h264 format. Configuration Add values in environment variables or add them in conf

Weeb >.< 61 Dec 29, 2022
pyYotubemanager is full web automated bot capable of General tasks like:- Uploading a Video , Downloading , adding Title , Description , Listing types , adding Thumbnail

PyYoutubemanager Explore the docs » View Demo · Report Bug · Request Feature About The Project PyYotubemanager is full web automated bot capable of Ge

4 Jun 29, 2022
Telegram Music/ Video Streaming Bot Using Pytgcalls

Video Player 🔥 ᴢᴀɪᴅ ᴠᴄ ᴘʟᴀyᴇʀ ɪꜱ ᴀ ᴛᴇʟᴇɢʀᴀᴍ ᴘʀᴏᴊᴇᴄᴛ ʙᴀꜱᴇᴅ ᴏɴ ᴘʏʀᴏɢʀᴀᴍ ꜰᴏʀ ᴘʟᴀʏ ᴍᴜꜱɪᴄꜱ ɪɴ ᴠᴄ ᴄʜᴀᴛꜱ... 🅡🅔🅟🅞 🅢🅣🅐🅣🅢 ʀᴇQᴜɪʀᴇᴍᴇɴᴛꜱ 📝 FFmpeg NodeJ

16 Nov 30, 2022
A way to run youtube videos in TTY

TTY youtube client its finally here, the one thing literally NO ONE ASKED FOR!! A way to run youtube videos in TTY Dependencies: (pip) yt-search (syst

1 Nov 28, 2021