Malware Scam against Facebook Uses Hayden and Rihana Panettiere

According to Sophos the security company, its researchers have detected one malicious campaign which's presently proliferating across Facebook, while aiming at sensational female celebrities Hayden and Rihana Panettiere.

Reportedly, the malicious scam projects captions such as "Hot Lesbian Video -Rihana" and "One more stolen home porn video Rihana and Hayden Panettiere" and provides a web-link apparently taking onto the video.

However, there's no video, as mentioned.

Instead if anyone follows the web-link, he lands on a site, which attempts at loading a scareware i.e. fake anti-virus program. Moreover, based on whether an affected user utilizes a PC or Mac there takes place slight variation in the scam. Thus, while using a PC, the victim on the scareware website is told that he requires loading Adobe Flash Player (latest edition) for seeing the video. However, he in reality downloads the scareware.

Contrarily using the Mac, the user confronts a pop up box, which seems to alert about a security problem. Here, if the victim opts for the "fix" button to rectify the issue, he merely loads the scareware.

Subsequently, when the loading finishes, there emerges scary pop ups comprising security warnings that actually lead the victim onto certain porn site after every 5-minute interval till the time he acquiesces to spend for the software's license. The expenditure normally varies between USD 60 and USD 80. Also the fake application embeds the movie web-links onto the victim's Facebook page so fresh victims can be enticed. Meanwhile, when payment is complete for the scareware, the software becomes dormant and it causes no further destruction, states researcher Chet Wisniewski at Sophos. Computerworld.com published this on June 1, 2011.

Now, to remain safe from scams like the above, security specialists suggest Web-surfers that they should first inform Facebook about the attacks. Thereafter, they must review their own page for possible spread of the campaign and erase any related postings at the earliest.

Eventually, the timing of the above scam i.e. end-week of May 2011 reportedly coincides with the bogus video by Facebook scammers that depicted shamed Dominique Strauss Kahn ex-IMF leader, while disseminated the same malicious software.

Related article: Malware Authors Turn More Insidious

» SPAMfighter News - 6/10/2011