Malwares, Worms hits Facebook

Trend Micro, a computer security firm, is warning that social-networking sites are under attack from a new wave of malware, worms and rogue applications. Although a number of the leading social-network sites have been targeted, the problem has hit Facebook hardest. "We didn't see a lot of these until recently," said Jamz Yaneza, the threat research manager for Trend Micro. "So far, they don't seem to be affecting users that much, although at least one Facebook group has been started by malware victims." Yaneza said there is particular concern about a new variant of a dangerous worm, WORM_KOOBFACE.AZ. Within a very short period of time, the setup file for Koobface.AZ appeared on more than 300 servers, mostly in Asia, and Trend Micro expects that number to rise quickly. Researchers also estimate that as many as 20,000 PCs are being infected each day. Sophisticated Identity Theft Koobface.AZ and other rogue applications either secretly steal user information or dupe users into revealing it voluntarily. For instance, late last week, some Facebook users received a notification in their user profile that they had been reported for a violation of the site's terms and conditions. Users who clicked on the notice were redirected to an application called "f a c e b o o k -- - closing down!!!," which promptly sent the same message to each of the user's friends. Researchers suspect the application was harvesting personal information along the way. A similar approach was used by the application "The Error Check System," which posted notifications from a user's friends that they had experienced "errors" while viewing the user's profile. If the user clicked through to "View the Error Messages," they were given a chance to "Activate" an errors-message checker -- which was really another copy of the rogue application. What happens, Yaneza explained, is that data stolen by the rogue applications gets uploaded to a third-party Web site. Session data, cookies and captured personal information can be used to log in to social-networking sites under the stolen identity, and then the software roots around for even more personal information. "It's Web 2.0," he said, "so there are no standards for how to secure log-in data and other session information." Is Openness the Problem? But an even bigger problem, Yaneza warned, is that the trend toward open social-networking applications makes it easy for identity thieves and other cybercriminals to write malicious applications. Facebook is the highest-profile target because of its user base, he said, but it's a problem faced by many other sites as well. Yaneza agreed that this threat is one reason why Apple's approval approach to the iPhone App Store should be followed by social-networking sites. "There has been a long-standing problem with easily registering malicious apps using a botnet," he said. "I think lockdowns need to be done; not everyone should be able to create an app."