YouTube wants to save a file to my computer?

[weberdarren97]

Hello all,
I had a rather odd thing happen today. I had a few songs open in YouTube so I could see for myself whether or not Saltatio Mortis really ripped off the German National Anthem or not. While one was playing in another tab, I was browsing through the articles here on Tom's and a download dialog box appeared. It wants to save what looks like a file with no extension to my computer. Yet, even without showing an extension, it recognizes that it's to be opened with Adobe Flash Player... I don't get that.

I have a few questions about this:
1) This isn't supposed to happen, right?
2) I've scanned with Avast and MalwareBytes (both free versions) and found 0 threats. Is that enough to say that I don't have a virus?
3) What could have caused this and is there a way for me to prevent it?

Thanks to all that offer their help,

Darren

 

[DarkSable]

That's... interesting.

1) No, it's not supposed to happen; what chrome extensions do you have installed?

2) Nothing is enough to say that you for sure don't have a virus, but I wouldn't call it likely at this point. Keep using it for a day or two and see if it happens again. (Obviously don't, say, do your banking on it.)

3) My guess as of this moment is a chrome extension - I've seen them do weird stuff even if they aren't hostile.

 

[weberdarren97]

That's... interesting.

1) No, it's not supposed to happen; what chrome extensions do you have installed?

2) Nothing is enough to say that you for sure don't have a virus, but I wouldn't call it likely at this point. Keep using it for a day or two and see if it happens again. (Obviously don't, say, do your banking on it.)

3) My guess as of this moment is a chrome extension - I've seen them do weird stuff even if they aren't hostile.

I'm using Firefox. I have two extensions installed:
1) Bluhell Firewall (keeps my brother from getting to an insecure destination when clicking on the ads on pron sites)
2) Adblock Plus

There are several plugins that are installed by default:
1) OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco Systems, Inc.
2) Primetime Content Decryption Module provided by Adobe Systems, Incorporated
3) Widevine Content Decryption Module provided by Google Inc.
4) Adobe Acrobat
5) AdobeAAMDetect
6) NVIDIA 3D Vision
7) NVIDIA 3D VISION

Note: I have nine different Adobe programs installed on this computer which is equipped with an Nvidia graphics card and related drivers.

 

[weberdarren97]

I have new information.

I just checked Windows Update and there were several updates waiting for a restart, one of which was a security update for Flash Player that was released three days ago. Do you think the lack of this update could have caused this?

 

[DarkSable]

Hmmmm... it could either be because of the update, or Adobe's primetime content decryption. I'm willing to bet, though, that it's not a virus. Your best bet is honestly to just wait and see what happens with it.

 

[weberdarren97]

It's been a few days and YouTube does not seem to show any more strange behavior.

 

[DarkSable]

Interesting. I'm guessing it was probably just something Adobe needed, but that got labeled oddly.