Hackers Continue Attacking Facebook

The security researchers have recently stated that Facebook users are being continuously attacked and these attacks are becoming increasingly dangerous, as per the news published by COMPUTERWORLD on June 2, 2010.

Over the past two weekends (in May 2010), cyber criminals have triggered two massive attacks using bogus Facebook applications that hit social networking sites' users with adware that displays pop-ups on their monitors.

The attacks involved messages that used sex-based videos as a lure to entice users into downloading a Facebook application that install a supposed free video player program update. Actually, the alleged download was adware. Security firm Websense has recognized almost 100 variants of the same Facebook attack application used in both the attacks and all of them are identical excluding the API keys required by the Facebook.

The chief technology officer at antivirus vendor AVG Technologies, Roger Thompson said that attack of last week of May 2010 was almost half the size of that launched in the third week, which infected user's computers with popup discharging adware, as per the news published by COMPUTERWORLD on June 2, 2010.

Security experts said that Facebook is the one of the most common targets of cyber crooks. On its security page, Facebook wrote that many malevolent applications have evolved recently and the company has been trying to disable these applications at the earliest, so as to limit any further infiltration by the scammers.

Unfortunately, Robert Thompson said that Facebook will continuously face troubles in getting rid of such attacks.

A UK-based researcher for Websense Security, Patrik Runald, revealed that the attacks could grow even more deceitful. Attackers can trick users into installing apparently anything, as per the news published by COMPUTERWORLD on June 2, 2010.

Referring to the botnet malware that has continuously hacked both Facebook and MySpace users, Runald added that the download can be anything - a fake antivirus or a Trojan.

Finally, users are recommended to use updated security software and be careful about the latest threats appearing on the social networking website.

Related article: Hackers Redirect Windows Live Search to Malicious Sites

» SPAMfighter News - 6/9/2010