Worms spread via spam on Facebook and MySpace

'Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf On The Street'

By John Leyden • Get more from this author

Posted in Anti-Virus, 1st August 2008 10:06 GMT

Free whitepaper – Avoiding 7 common mistakes of IT security compliance

Miscreants have created a pair of worms targeting MySpace and Facebook users. Two variants of a new worm - dubbed Koobface - are the first to use social engineering sites to press-gang infected machines into botnets, warns net security firm Kaspersky Lab.

When a user with an infected machine accesses his MySpace account the Koobface-A variant posts links to a malicious website in the commentaries of friends' accounts. Koobface-B, which targets Facebook users, sends spam messages to an infected users' friends through the social networking site.

The text of these messages includes "Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf On The Street" and "Hello; You must see it!!! LOL. My friend catched you on hidden cam", among others. Prospective marks are invited to click on a link that takes them to a booby-trapped site purporting to contain a video clip.

Users are prompted to download the "latest version of Flash Player", but in fact are offered a file called codesetup.exe that carries the payload for the Koobface network worm.

Alexander Gostev, senior virus analyst at Kaspersky Lab, said similar attacks can be expected in future.

"At the beginning of 2008 we predicted that we'd see an increase in cybercriminals exploiting MySpace, Facebook and similar sites, and we're now seeing evidence of this. I'm sure that this is simply the first step, and that virus writers will continue to target these resources with increased intensity," he said. ®

Free whitepaper – Vulnerability management buyer's checklist