Facebook Spammers, Facebook Scammers
Phishers know how to follow the money. And the most popular social networking site, Facebook has become an obvious target for spam and malware attacks. This year, the popular social networking site became the target of numerous malicious worms, the latest being the Koobface virus, a Net worm designed to transform victims' computers into zombies that form a botnet. The worm spreads when users access their Facebook account. The worm creates a spam message, which it then sends to everyone on the user's contact list. Once the recipients open the link, they are redirected to a YouTube site, which allegedly claims to feature a video clip. If users attempts to open the video, they are asked to download the latest version of Flash Player, which in actuality is a malicious executable, which is also the Koobface worm.
Meanwhile, Facebook spam also took a sharp upward spike in 2008. Spammers spoofed user's accounts by capitalizing on the site's "wall" feature. Victims were enticed to click on a link from someone they thought was on their contact list, not realizing their friend's account had been hijacked. Once they opened the link, the users were then asked to submit login credentials. In reality however, their information was being sent to spammers who used the information for further "spamvertising" or to access copious accounts in subsequent phishing attacks.
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