You open Facebook and you see an email from a trusted friend. It reads something like this:
Hey, I have this hilarious video of you dancing. Your face is so red. You should check it out.
If you’d been dancing recently, you might click on the link. Then you would receive an screen that tells you that Flash player must be updated before the video can be displayed. You’ve seen these Flash Player update request a thousand times … so it must be safe. Right? WRONG!!!
You just clicked on a virus, cloaked in a “flash_player.exe” file. According to the Kaspersky Lab, an antivirus organization working with Facebook, “the worms transform victim machines into zombie computers to form botnets.”
The McAfee Security Blog explains that “Koobface” prompts a downloaded service named Security Accounts Manager (SamSs) to load whenever you start your computer. SamSs then proxies all HTTP traffic, stealing results from popular search engines and hijacking them to lesser-known search sites.
You can usually spot virusy e-mails by their subject. Kaspersky found the following with viruses: Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf On The Street; Examiners Caught Downloading Grades From The Internet; You must see it!!! LOL. My friend caught you on hidden cam; Is it really celebrity? Funny Moments. These and subject lines with typos are warning signs that you are under attack.
If you couldn’t resist the urge to see Paris Hilton tossing a dwarf, and your computer is infected, Spyware.com has a free Koobface virus remover.
If you liked my post, feel free to subscribe to my rss feeds
BlogoSquare
2 Comments so far (Add 1 more)