"Koobface" Virus Turns Up on Facebook

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: NYT/Reuters

Facebook's 120 million users are being targeted by a virus dubbed "Koobface" that uses the social network's messaging system to infect PCs, then tries to gather sensitive information such as credit card numbers. It is the latest attack by hackers increasingly looking to prey on users of social networking sites.

"A few other viruses have tried to use Facebook in similar ways to propagate themselves," Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said in an e-mail. He said a "very small percentage of users" had been affected by these viruses.

"It is on the rise, relative to other threats like e-mails," said Craig Schmugar, a researcher with McAfee Inc.

Koobface spreads by sending notes to friends of someone whose PC has been infected. The messages, with subject headers like, "You look just awesome in this new movie," direct recipients to a website where they are asked to download what it claims is an update of Adobe Systems Inc's Flash player. If they download the software, users end up with an infected computer, which then takes users to contaminated sites when they try to use search engines from Google, Yahoo, MSN and Live.com, according to McAfee....

***

Privately held Facebook has told members to delete contaminated e-mails and has posted directions at http://www.facebook.com/security on how to clean infected computers....

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-us-facebook-virus.html

[frylock]

1. kaspersky had sigs for this in july..

mcafee sucks.

[onehandle]

2. I don't go to Facebook and I have a Mac. I'm good. nt

[kentauros]

3. I don't go to Facebook

and I use Opera as my browser, so I'm good, too :)

[PittPoliSci]

6. i always wondered about opera.

it's the default browser for the wii's internet channel. is it any good?

[sofa king]

8. Yeah, I thought so.

I used to use it in the bad-old-days of Windows 98, and back then it was noticeably faster than IE, was very customizable, had a fine bookmarking system, and somehow didn't crash that shitty operating system nearly as much as Microsoft's own browser did. (When I look out to the parking lot and see no flying cars there, I blame Windows 98, so take my opinion with that large grain of salt.) Opera back then was still better than IE is now.

I switched over to Firefox mainly because I was testing it out, liked its niftiness just as much, and so I sort of left Opera behind. But Opera would certainly be my second choice, if I had to make one, and now that the black-hats are targeting Firefox because of its rising popularity, I might have to make that choice someday soon....

[silverojo]

11. I'm using Win98SE, and it's a helluva lot better than Vista

Vista gives you more crashes than a NASCAR race, endless permission nags, and you have to spend a fortune to get a PC powerful enough to handle all the bloat in Windows Vista.

The only problems I've had with Win98SE are those which I brought upon myself--user error.

I use Win98SE and Linux, so I have the best of both worlds...without spending a cent on a new machine!

Getting back to Opera, I've tried Firefox, and have labeled it Firesux. I briefly labored under the delusion that maybe FF wouldn't work on my PC because of my old Windows system. But when I started using Linux, and FF was still buggy, unreliable, and a total pain to use...I realized then just how awful FF is.

I'm using Puppy Linux, a distro that gets blazing speed even out of PC's older than mine. If a program sucks on Puppy, it just plain sucks. :(

[sofa king]

13. Wow, you're hard core!

Never heard of Puppy, but I've been telling myself for ten years that I've got to learn Linux or simply turn in my nerd credentials.

And, you're bold for running 98SE in this day and age. That OS was never secure, and now it's effectively unsupported, too. Or so I thought--you must have a way around all that. Do you use a hardware firewall?

I held out for as long as I could and then I switched over to XP and ran a bunch of http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html">Koroush Ghazi's tweaks on it. My personal experience is that once it's de-fanged, XP's overclocking stability is far superior to 98SE, and since that's my primary concern, that's where I'm stickin' for the foreseeable future. I would like to make XP my last Microsoft OS, and I'm not touching Vista unless someone puts a gun to my head.

Now that you mention it, it was the tabbed browsing that sold me on Opera in the first place, and I suppose that's what made it easy for me to switch over to Firefox.

[silverojo]

10. It's fabulous!

Firefox is bloatware, and so slow compared to Opera. Plus, you have to download all sorts of extensions, to make Firefox do half of what Opera is capable of, out of the box.

It includes mail and chat functions, too. Everything today's browsers do, like tabbed browsing, were pioneered by Opera.

I wouldn't want to surf the internet without it! :D

[PittPoliSci]

12. thanks!

i'll probably make the change tonight or tomorrow then. i'm always up for something new.

[silverojo]

9. I don't go to facebook, I use the Opera browser...

AND I'm using Linux, so I'm best of all! :rofl:

[nini]

4. Macs are not bullet proof

but if you want to believe that go ahead.

I guarantee you this will one day bite the asses of mac users hard.

[onehandle]

5. Maybe. But 20+ years of not having to worry about viruses has been sweet.

And continues to this day. And beyond.

[nini]

7. I understand

I feel these days there is a false sense of security there though.

[PfcHammer]

14. Opera is teh awesome. Social networks are an excellent conduit

to spread viruses