Phishing Attack Grabs Access To Facebook Accounts
Another Facebook phishing attack was under way Thursday. Phishers hijacked Facebook messages and inserted fake links that take users to a bogus site where they were instructed to log in to Facebook again. If they did, the phishers captured the username and password information.
One version of the e-mail reads: “Susan sent you a message. Subject: Hello. Check 121.im,” with “121.im” as a link. Compromised accounts help spread the malicious links rapidly across the network.
Facebook identified and blocked the e-mails with the fake link within a few hours of the attack’s execution, but many members received the bogus message before the popular social-networking site acted. Facebook changes the passwords on victims’ accounts to foil the phishers, but it hasn’t divulged how many of its 200 million members were affected.
Danger to Corporations
The latest attack comes as no surprise to Sophos. Just two weeks ago, the company revealed the results of its latest research into cybercrime’s new frontier: Social networking.
A recent Sophos poll revealed 63 percent of system administrators worry that employees share too much personal information via their social-networking profiles, putting their corporate infrastructure — and the sensitive data stored on it — at risk. The findings also indicate that a quarter of businesses have been the victim of spam, phishing or malware attacks via sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace.
With social networking now part of many computer users’ daily routine, unprecedented amounts of information are updated every minute, Sophos said. Frequent use of social-networking sites makes them a prime target for cybercriminals intent on stealing identities, spreading malware, or bombarding users with spam.
The Bigger Picture
In Thursday’s scam, hackers sent convincing messages to compromised members’ friends and family, potentially stealing their credentials and opening them up to the danger of malicious Web sites or spam advertisements, according to…
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