Photoshopped image scam used in rogue Facebook app trap
Spreading across social network at 90,000 clicks an hour
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Facebook users were put under fire on Monday by a brace of new threats, one of which spreads through a link disseminated through the Facebook Chat application.
An estimated 600,000 people have already clicked onto the link, which falsely promises to show them a funny Photoshopped image of themselves. In reality users install a rogue application which sends messages to their contacts via the social network's IM feature, thus continuing the infection cycle.
Users are taken to a fixed gallery of 45 photoshopped images (such as the image of someone's features morphed onto a dog's head), none of which feature the person who followed the link. M86 Security reports that the scam, whose purpose is unknown, is spreading quickly, attracting new victims at the rate of around 90,000 clicks per hour.
No malware is getting spread through the ruse, at least at present. Details on the attack, complete with screenshots, can be found in a blog post by M86 here.
Separately, a slew of various rogue applications offer the false promise of letting Facebook members known "how many times their profile has been viewed". Some of these apps give a breakdown of male and female profile viewers.
Interested parties are asked to complete a survey, the real purpose of the ruse, before getting access to the "locked away" content, which in reality doesn't exist.
Such survey scams are all too common on Facebook. Previous ruses have falsely offered access to an "unlike" application, for example.
More details on the latest rogue app, and how to avoid this type of shenanigan more generally, can be found in a blog post by Sophos here. ®
COMMENTS
Easy
Simple rule to avoid this sort of thing
1) Never install a Facebook app. They are either malware or pointless junk.
There we go. Easy.
If you are vain enough to care who is viewing your profile or really want to see your head morphed into a dog then you deserve everything you get.
and ......
and queue the mass of posts all saying what a piece of crap facebook is and how the great unwashed who all use it get what they deserve for using facebook !
cue
queue = line of people waiting their turn for something.
cue = trigger for another action, marker; stick for playing pool; to position a gramophone record so that the beginning of the song is directly under the stylus.
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