New Worm Targets Facebook

ESET, an anti-virus and threat protection firm, has revealed that a new worm may be circulating on social networking website Facebook. The attack begins as an Instant Message coming from a Facebook friend.

ESET Director of Technical Education, Randy Abrams, stated that one of his friends got an Instant Message, which stated that his friend had made a cartoon of himself which he would show only if the recipient agreed to make a similar one of himself, as reported by researcher's blog published by eset on August 4, 2010,.

It is reported that the IM contains a link that directs to a website which allows users to upload their picture and they will change it in a cartoon for a fee. Although Randy's friend did not click on the link and neither send the Instant Message, he did click on the IM from a Facebook friend.

As per Randy Abrams, he had reported the matter to Facebook, and Facebook is examining it.

Commenting on the attack, Abrams revealed that this could be an IM spam attack but he was not sure whether the attack was linked with a worm. It might not be a worm, but a different kind of attack that involved different levels of criminal groups, as reported by irish dev on August 6, 2010.

He further explained that the two main ways of stealing a Facebook account were - phishing for stealing required information and guessing of username and password. If someone uses the same password for Facebook which he used for some other site, then there are chances that the password will be phished by cyber crooks and they will get access to his Myspace or Facebook or some other social networking website account details.

Hence, users are advised not to click on a link blindly. They should always check with their friend that whether they have actually sent some link or not. If the friend says "no", then the user should understand that there must be some problem, as per the security experts.

Related article: New Zealand Releases Code To Reduce Spam

» SPAMfighter News - 8/16/2010