Facebook attacked by Koobface virus. Are social networking users more vulnerable to virus attacks?

BOSTON (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 McAfee.

McAfee warned in a blog entry on Wednesday that its researchers had discovered that Koobface was making the rounds on Facebook.

Social network MySpace, owned by News Corp, was hit by a version of Koobface in August and used security technology to eradicate it, according to a company spokeswoman. The virus has not cropped up since then, she said.

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

So as opposed to network attacks, online users can increasingly be infected by viruses by simply visiting everyday Web sites, the 13th edition of the Internet Security Threat Report prepared by leading security provider, Symantec Corporation said.

In the last few years spammers took the security industry by storm and showcased their new tactics and techniques for mass disruption. It seems like the trend will continue to grow and now social networking sites will also be used to filter information directly from users computers. I personally think social networking sites are most vulnerable because as they are login based most of the users trust the messages, videos and pictures and other sources of information and thus don’t think twice before clicking.

Well, it looks like things need to change and that too pretty soon. Happy Blogging!

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