Facebook has endured more than its fair share of malware and hacking scams. In the latest affront to users’ security, a bogus and rather convincing virus alert was spreading like wildfire throughout the community. eSecurity Planet takes a closer look at what made this particular piece of malware so viral, so fast.
A massive scareware scam has been targeting Facebook users over the past two days, in which a fake virus warning is distributed via e-mail and then forwarded or published to thousands of Facebook walls, according to researchers at security software vendor Panda Security.
Facebook and other social networking sites have provided a fertile field for hackers and malware purveyors to ply their trade. Not surprisingly, the level of sophistication and clever tactics used to hoodwink Internet users continues to escalate on an almost daily basis.
In a blog posting Thursday, PandaLabs researchers begrudgingly admitted that whoever conjured up this latest scareware scam was smarter and more creative than most.
The unsolicited warning delivered through e-mail accounts and then posted on Facebook asks users if their Facebook has “been running slow lately” and directs recipients to click on their Settings link and check to see if there’s something called “unnamed app” in their application settings.