Facebook Malware Goes Viral

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Posted by samzenpus on Sunday February 5, 2012 @05:12PM from the spreading-the-bad-news dept.

itwbennett writes "Just a few hours after a fake CNN news report appeared on Facebook Friday, more than 60,000 users had gone to the spoofed, malware bearing page according to Sophos Senior Security Advisor Chester Wisniewski. Facebook didn't respond to IDG News Service's request for information on 'how widespread the problem was or whether its own security had been breached, but Wisniewski said that there are a number of ways that status updates could appear without users' knowledge.'"

14 of 123 comments (clear)

Hopefully lots of stuff of value was lost by Khyber · 2012-02-05 17:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

Maybe that'll teach people to be more wary about random links they see.

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Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
1. Re:Hopefully lots of stuff of value was lost by bogaboga · 2012-02-05 17:26 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Maybe that'll teach people to be more wary about random links they see.
  Some people might call you a sadist, unfortunately. In my case though, I hope Slashdot will not 'force' us to use Facebook login...or whatever they call it.
  This is because I do not have a Facebook account and do not intend to get one. Do not call me weird. People at work have called me names for not having a Facebook account.
  Here is my reason for not having one: Having a Facebook account adds no value to me at all, save for inviting unwanted folks I have always loved to avoid into my life. Besides, I am too busy for Face-book anyway.
2. Re:Hopefully lots of stuff of value was lost by mikeburke · 2012-02-05 17:36 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Besides, I am too busy for Face-book anyway.
  Yes, these posts on Slashdot will wait for no man... can't these people see I'm busy?
3. Re:Hopefully lots of stuff of value was lost by mlts · 2012-02-05 17:46 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  When I was in the job market, I lost potential jobs for not having a FB account.
  With the fact that there is concern about deleted stuff not really being deleted, people searching profiles for anything (where a bad joke reposted can get someone flagged as a racist or gun nut for 7 years), using FB as a communication tool for anything other than the latest cat meme is out of the question.
  I sometimes wonder about someone coming up with a paid membership site (so the subscribers are the true customers) for social networking where only the parties involved (and possibly LEOs) are the only ones privy to information posted and shared. Combine that, plus having data erased after a forensically apt period of time (30 days after it was deleted by the user), and this would be an actually useful service.
4. Re:Hopefully lots of stuff of value was lost by tlhIngan · 2012-02-05 18:39 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  When I was in the job market, I lost potential jobs for not having a FB account.
  With the fact that there is concern about deleted stuff not really being deleted, people searching profiles for anything (where a bad joke reposted can get someone flagged as a racist or gun nut for 7 years), using FB as a communication tool for anything other than the latest cat meme is out of the question.
  So use Facebook as I use it - very carefully.
  I put up a very minimal profile (Facebook may ask for a ton of information, but they require very little). Put up a neutral profile pic, and don't bother uploading any more photos.
  Then accept friends with caution. There is no law saying you have to friend every real life friend on Facebook. I don't - in fact, I have probably 8-10 people on my "requesting to friend you" list. They are people I know in real life, but to whom I don't really care about. No one said you have to have a million "friends" in your friend list, or accept every invitation.
  I also set all the controls so my friends can't do anything like tag me or such. And I don't post my every whim/though/status update there. Actually, I don't bother posting at all - it's just a token account I use to control my online identity. (I also don't spend more than a few minutes every few months).
  There's no reason one can't have a facebook account, nor any law requiring one spend hours on the site - just set up a minimal profile, carefully choose your friends, and watch what you post (remember that everything you post online the entire world can see, regardless of privacy settings - so treat every post as a public blog post or comment on a website that everyone can see).
  The real challenge though is the dancing pigs problem, which most people on facebook seem vulnerable to.
5. Re:Hopefully lots of stuff of value was lost by rhook · 2012-02-05 19:26 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I have a bridge for sale in Brooklyn that they might be interested in. Cheap.
6. Re:Hopefully lots of stuff of value was lost by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-05 20:36 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Maybe that'll teach people to be more wary about random links they see.
  Not really directed at you, as such, but... When did we accept that clicking on a link is a dangerous operation? I mean, sure, there's a risk you might end up at goatse or whatnot, but are browsers and web devs really so utterly incompetent that simply fetching a page from a dubious domain counts as head-slapping user error? It's really not that long since browsing the web was fairly safe, at least to the extent that if you didn't download and run random .exes it wouldn't break your computer. Most users expect that it still is and, frankly, they're right to have that expectation.
  Or, to put it another way: the user can bork your security model just by clicking on a link, the problem is with the security model rather than with the user.
7. Re:Hopefully lots of stuff of value was lost by flimflammer · 2012-02-05 21:36 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  If you lost potential jobs by not having a facebook account, then you did not want to work there anyway. They just wanted you to do their research for them by divulging every detail of your life on facebook so they could go through it and nitpick every little comment and picture in your account.
8. Re:Hopefully lots of stuff of value was lost by Lumpy · 2012-02-05 23:36 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  "Maybe that'll teach people to be more wary about random links they see."
  No, no it wont. I have worked in IT for 12 years and was happy to escape it 6 years ago. I still see that even today, the average user gleefully clicks on any link they see. I think most users think the internet is a giant game of whack a mole.
  
  --
  Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It must be hell out there, with that weather... by SeaFox · 2012-02-05 17:38 · Score: 5, Funny

Was anyone else amused the news article is titled "U.S. Attacks Iran and Saudi Arabia", but the video thumbnail shows tanks driving through snow?
1. Re:It must be hell out there, with that weather... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-05 18:15 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  It's not snow but rather, cocaine. Explains the madness going on in those countries.
Bad advice in article by Nebulo · 2012-02-05 17:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

The article states, "Of course there is no such Flash update. You should always download Flash from a genuine Adobe site."
This is poor advice. I would suggest, "Flash should never be installed on anyone's computer, ever."
nebulo
Those wily fb links by tkprit · 2012-02-05 17:50 · Score: 5, Insightful

Bitches are getting good! If I see an interesting link on FB that hasn't popped up in my reader, I go to the source site and try to find the linked article myself because, well, it's FB. But I noticed a crazy-sounding headline from The Washington Post, went to the wp site, never found it, went back to fb and hovered over the link, ready to warn the friend that they'd clicked the wrong link — hoverlink pointed to trove.fb.xxxxxxx (one of those apps for "social sharing" every 'article' you read in the app). I didn't allow the app, of course, but the headline being on the WP bugged me; back on wp.com, I finally found a barely-related article that had a sentence buried deep inside it that alluded to the sensationalistic headline linked on fb. I should have known: the Post dumbs down the articles for fb (why would anyone want to admit to reading the dumbed-down versions?).
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These apps are hell! Why not just go to the WP and read the whole article there? It's like AOL came back from the 90s, bigger and badder (content not served to you; you have to beg for it by approving each 'app', and then you just get a morsel instead of the whole content). And ppl want this?!
Fine; let em have it. I now officially support these fb malware apps — funny to watch in action, and maybe enough of them will teach people not to use these 'apps'. And booyah on the Post for succumbing to the dumbing down of content to feed the masses.
Re:Windows malware doesn't go viral by bmo · 2012-02-05 18:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

>It should be pointed out that only users of Facebook and 'Adobe Flash` running on Microsoft are suseptable to this vulnerability.
Actually, it's the people in the Windows world who have been taught by the likes of Adobe and such that the normal way to install software is when you encounter a site that requires some special codec, that you install it straight away without question.
Flash itself is not the problem, it's the behavior of users who have been taught wrong in the Windows universe.
In sane environments, you look for trusted sources for software before blindly clicking on a web page. The Free Software world teaches people to look in the trusted repositories first (bsd ports system, debian packages, gentoo portage, etc) before downloading random binary code and running it willy-nilly.
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BMO