Facebook & Microsoft Partner To Fight Koobface Worm

[Peaches]

<h1 class="storyHeadlineFull" style="padding-left: 1px; margin-left: -2px; letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: left;">Facebook, Microsoft Partner To Fight Koobface Worm </h1> The Koobface virus, which spreads through social networking sites, has been added to Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool.

By Thomas Claburn

InformationWeek

April 6, 2009 04:55 PM

In a partnership that reflects the growing need for cooperative responses to online security threats, Facebook last week said that it was working with Microsoft to protect people from the Koobface virus. Koobface appeared last May, fulfilling predictions by security companies that social networking sites would become magnets for malware.

Koobface is a computer worm that spreads through malicious Web links and affects Facebook and MySpace users running unpatched versions of Windows. Upon successfully infecting a computer, it steals social networking logon information to create spam messages and sends them to friends on Facebook or MySpace, depending upon the variant. The spammed links typically lead to a video site that purports to require a download to view the video. Trying to download the file invites malware that tries to compromise the user's computer and continues infecting other computers through social networks. In a Facebook blog post, Jeff Williams, a principal group program manager for the Microsoft Malware Protection Center, explains that Microsoft worked with Facebook to add Koobface to its Malicious Software Removal Tool. "Since releasing our newest version of MSRT two weeks ago, we've removed Koobface nearly 200,000 times from over 133,677 computers in more than 140 different locales around the world," he said."

Details at IWeek - http://www.informationweek.com/news/securi...cleID=216403016