‘Koobface’ targets Facebook

BOSTON: Facebook’s 120 million users are being targeted by a virus dubbed ‘Koobface’, which uses the social network’s messaging system to infect PCs and then tries to gather sensitive information such as credit card numbers.

It is the latest attack by hackers increasingly looking to prey on users of social networking sites. “A few other viruses have tried to use Facebook in similar ways,” Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said in an email. He said a “very small percentage of users” had been affected by these viruses.

“It is on the rise, relative to other threats like emails,” said Craig Schmugar, a researcher with anti-virus software provider McAfee.

Koobface spreads by sending notes to friends of someone whose PC has been infected. The messages, with subject headers like “You look just awesome in this new movie”, direct recipients to a website where they are asked to download what it claims is an update of Adobe’s Flash player.

If they download the software, users end up with an infected computer, which then takes users to contaminated sites when they try to use search engines, McAfee said.
Facebook requires senders of messages within the network to be members and hides user data from people who do not have accounts, said Chris Boyd, a researcher with FaceTime Security Labs. Because of that, users tend to be far less suspicious of messages they receive in the network.

“People tend to let their guard down,” Boyd said. “They think you’ve got to log in with an account, so there is no way that worms and other viruses could infect them.”
Facebook has told members to delete contaminated emails and posted directions at http:www.facebook.com/ security on how to clean infected computers.