Peaches Posted February 28, 2009 Report Share Posted February 28, 2009 Second rogue Facebook app bewilders users Poisoned mushrooms and spam By John Leyden Posted in Spam, 27th February 2009 11:54 GMT Scoundrels have created another rogue Facebook application, the second to hit the social networking site in less than a week. In the second attack, Facebook users receive notices that they have supposedly being reported for violation of the social networking site's terms of service by someone in their friends list. A link on the notification leads to an application called "f a c e b o o k - - closing down!!!" which, post installation, spams all the affected user’s friends with the same message. Last weekend a similar application called Error Check System, which posed as notification of errors in a Facebook user's profile, used almost identical tricks to spread itself across Facebook. Searches for the phrase "Error Check System" via Google and the like returned numerous results linking to sites punting rogue antivirus (aka scareware) packages. Security watchers use this factor to support the theory that black-hat search engine optimisation may have been the real motive behind the attack. full story: The Register - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/27/rogue_facebook_app/ Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Peaches Posted February 28, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 28, 2009 5 Facebook Schemes That Threaten Your PrivacyFacebook and other social networks can be easy targets. Here's how to protect yourself and your Facebook friends. JR Raphael, PC World Beny Rubinstein knows computer security. An employee of a Seattle-area tech giant with 20 years of IT experience under his belt, Rubinstein has seen a side of the industry that most people will never know. He holds a degree in computer engineering, and--oh yeah--he just got scammed out of $1100 on Facebook. Rubinstein's experience isn't entirely uncommon. (We'll get to the specifics in a moment.) What's striking about his story, though, is that it demonstrates how easily anyone--even a highly trained expert in computer security--can be ensnared by a seemingly simple social network trick. And all kinds of these schemes are on the loose. More than 20,000 pieces of malware attacked social networks in 2008 alone, estimates the online-security firm Kaspersky Lab. That's no surprise, either: While e-mail is still the most spam-filled medium, researchers suspect that social network cybercrime is growing at a far faster rate. "People are used to receiving spam and malicious messages in their e-mail, but it is much less common on Facebook," says Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant with Sophos. "They are lulled into a false sense of security and act unsafely as a result." Article: http://www.pcworld.com/article/159738/5_fa...ur_privacy.html Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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