Viruses/Worms News

Phony Facebook profiles spreading fake anti-virus malware

Monday, October 5, 2009

Web security researchers from anti-virus vendor AVG recently uncovered bogus Facebook profiles that contain fake anti-virus malware - the increasingly common scareware that can infect PCs for stealing data and sending spam.

AVG's Roger Thompson discovered at least three Facebook accounts with identical profile photos but under separate names that were distributing the fake AV scareware.

"Clearly, the Data Snatchers have found a way to automate the creation of Facebook accounts, which means they've found a way to bypass the Facebook Captcha," Thompson said on AVG's blog.

Captchas, the images of letters which humans can read but computer bots can not, are intended to protect against spam email and social network accounts.

Researchers from Trend Micro reported recently that the Koobface worm spread via Facebook can break Captchas by directing infected users to fill out Captcha boxes the program could be using to create phony accounts for spam and malware attacks.

The FBI is warning online social network users about sharing personal information on their profile pages that could be used for identity theft and to protect against malware attacks.

Nearly 3,200 cases of social network account hijackings have been reported to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center since 2006.