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Worm Squirms After MySpace, Facebook Users
David Utter
Staff Writer
2008-08-04
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
Another pest started making the rounds of social networking recently, offering people a video but secretly dropping a Trojan onto vulnerable systems.
 | | Worm Squirms After MySpace, Facebook Users |  |
The popularity of social networking, coupled with a not-unjustified belief that younger computer users may not be as wary of clicking on links from suspicious sources as they should be, contributed to the latest malware problem circulating the Internet.
Security vendor Kaspersky Lab said two variants of a new worm that they dubbed Networm.Win32.Koobface.a. and Networm.Win32.Koobface.b, aim their efforts at Facebook and MySpace users. Each worm attempts to spam one's friends with comments and links to a purported entertainment video.
(Entertainment being a relative word; one of the messages reads "Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf On The Street" but to each his own we guess.)
The link included with the spammed comments goes to a .pl site where it tries to play a video, but generates a fake popup alert that one's Flash Player needs an upgrade. Downloading the phony update from the link drops the worm onto the computer.
From there it tries to make the PC a botnetted device. The Trojans also have the ability to upload modules from the compromised machine to other.
"I'm sure that this is simply the first step, and that virus writers will continue to target these resources with increased intensity," Kaspersky Lab's Alexander Gostev said.
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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