Facebook Account of Lichfield MP Blocked Following a Hack

Facebook administrators in the United States have blocked the Facebook account of MP Michael Fabricant of Lichfield (UK) after a phishing campaign attacked it for illegal activities, as reported by ThisisLichfield on May 27, 2009. The attackers, after the hack, used Fabricant's account to spam messages to more than 1,500 of the MP's online friends.

The hackers believed to have compromised Mr. Fabricant's account using a PC worm. This program, created to spread from one PC to another, has the dangerous capacity to proliferate even when there is no user-interaction. Worms multiply after infiltrating computers and then distribute a huge number of their own copies to other systems, the security specialists stated.

A computer worm, which duplicates itself, travels to every person whose e-mail address is listed on the victim's contact book. And as it reaches the other systems, the program multiplies again and similarly spread its copies to all of the addresses in the new victims' address book, and the process goes on.

In Mr. Fabricant's case, all his friends on Facebook were sent an e-mail with the header "Look at this" together with a web link, in an automatic fashion from his PC.

Commenting on the fraudulent scam, Mr. Fabricant stated that he was greatly disappointed as such an incident had never happened with him earlier and he could merely apologize to his Facebook friends, as reported by ThisisLichfiled on May 27, 2009. Mr. Fabricant thus urged all his Facebook friends that if they receive the message, "Look at this," they must not open it. He added that he opened one and was paying the price, being barred from cyber space as well as unable to exchange messages with his online friends.

Meanwhile, Mr. Fabricant is continuously striving for the restoration of his account after sending "begging message" to administrators by an e-mail. He has also reset the password for his account.

The security researchers state that cyber criminals' attack on a Facebook account belonging to a person of such high stature is not new, as in March 2008, a Canadian hacker accessed the Facebook account of Paris Hilton, exposing online, several of her confidential photos.

Related article: Facebook Users Should be Careful of a Computer Virus

» SPAMfighter News - 6/1/2009