Rogue Facebook App Affects 300,000 Users
July 7th, 2010 - 7:40 pm ICT by GDBy Ranjan Bhaduri
July 7, (THAINDIAN NEWS) The social networking sites have become the soft targets for the hackers and people with malicious intentions who derive perverted pleasure in inconveniencing other web users. Earlier they used to target the email accounts and many worms spread that way. However, present generation antivirus software is smart enough to detect span mails. Hence, the hackers are now increasingly targeting the popular social networking sites. Facebook which has drawn flak from the tech pundits for its security loopholes quite a number of times has again come under fire for a new worm which had used the site to infect several thousand users worldwide.
A new spam application is using Facebook to lure the users into its trap. It falsely says that the users will get to see a shocking video if they click on a link. It has been reported by noted anti virus firm Sophos. If a user clicks it he enables the worm to spread to the contacts he has in his Facebook account. However, the worm does not install any code on the system of the user as such and can also be uninstalled later. The worm does not cause data loss or any other serious harm.
Almost 300000 users have been tricked by the worm already. The security experts have said that the web users need to be aware of such worms that are targeting Facebook and similar sites these days. Facebook also needs to ramp up its security levels and tweak its personalization options so that the users do not become susceptible to online threats that can wreck havoc with their systems.
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- Facebook Clickjacking Worm May Hurt Your Wallet, Warns Sophos - Aug 19, 2010
- Be Wary Of Rogue App In Facebook! - Jul 07, 2010
- Facebook Outage Lasted For 30 Minutes When Company Tested New Features - Dec 17, 2010
- Twitter accounts hacked, flooded with spam - Dec 14, 2010
- 20pc of Facebook users exposed to malware - Nov 25, 2010
- 'Hacker' application on Facebook stealing users' personal info - Aug 18, 2010
- Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook page hacked - Jan 26, 2011
- 'See who viewed your profile' is latest Facebook scam - Nov 30, 2010
- Cyber criminals to target social networks, mobile devices: Security Report - Apr 06, 2011
- Twitter Hacked? Loophole Found And Fixed, Users Relieved - Sep 22, 2010
- Attack on Gawker enables spammers to take over Twitter accounts - Dec 14, 2010
Tags: anti virus, email accounts, facebook, hackers, havoc, malicious intentions, new worm, personalization options, pundits, security experts, security levels, security loopholes, several thousand, shocking video, similar sites, social networking sites, soft targets, sophos, web users, worms