I just got an email from a Facebook friend who'd been hacked. She writes:
Hi Friends, I'm writing everyone, because i'm not sure how many people received some SPAM on their wall today from persumably me. I just noticed that a few of my family members had messages from "me" on their wall spamming them.
I just wanted to let you know if you did or ever receive anything like this from me, that it is NOT me. I'm not sure how someone was able to send stuff through my account, but I did just change my password and wrote Facebook a letter. Please let me know if it ever happens again. Also, if you are familiar with this type of thing and could give me advice on how to deal with it, I would really appreciate it.
Then, I read this at Switched dot com:
Usually walls are used to keep things out, you know, like the wind, or bugs, or barbarian invaders.
Ironic, then, that Facebook's iconic Wall, the thing that helped to set it apart from MySpace and grab a huge share of the online social networking space, is actually being used by some to spread malicious software capable of turning your machine into a zombie, so that others with bad intents can control it and make it do their bidding online.
The "attack" is actually rather unsophisticated -- just a link posted to the wall to a site that supposedly has a video of, what else, a celebrity caught in a private moment doing naughty things with a special someone.
Naturally the site doesn't have any such video, just a fake version of the Flash plugin that is actually the malware itself. You're prompted to install it to view the video and, once installed, your machine is theirs for the taking So, as always, be careful where you click, keep your virus scanner up to date, and only install plug-ins like that from official sources, like Adobe.com.
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