With just under two billion users, it should be little wonder that Facebook is a prime target of malware.
This is what we know of the latest one doing the rounds, which has now made its way to SA and seems to be spreading:
Using a series of seemingly legit URL addresses, a recent video spam has left many South African victims unable to get rid of a virus which has spread its venom through Messenger.
A Trojan virus, it starts off as a message in Messenger, sent from someone on your friend’s list, which looks like this – the blank part would be the receiver’s name:
A smiley face? A Bitly link? No worries, let’s click.
You are then directed to a page that has the person who sent it to you’s profile pic in full, with a “play” button over it. The URL in the address bar is a docs.google.com link so again, that means it must be legit, right?
Well, no. Clicking the play button is where things get dark.
Directed to a page like the one below, you might notice one too many variables that look a little weird – from a sloppy URL address, to an obvious fake YouTube page, here’s what you will see:
Waiting for the page to load and, bam, you are infected. Before you know it you are sending messages like the one above to your friend list.
Talk about awkward. I mean, how could you fall for such a scam? Your mind must be elsewhere, right?
But what’s the point of it?
Well, according to Good Things Guy, these type of Facebook Trojans “operate on the botnet principle, and they can quickly become very massive with their primary purpose to steal your information,” including:
And how do you get rid of the malware? Here are a few steps:
No doubt that’s valuable information up there, so bookmark this article for the future, because, as Information Security specialists like to say, it’s not “if” you’re going to get hacked, it’s “when” – and we know Facebook scams are only set to get more and more sneaky.
[source: goodthingsguy]
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