Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf On The Street as Koobface worms its way into Facebook and MySpace

By Davey Winder
Friday, 01 August 2008 15:24

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Kaspersky Lab is warning of a new worm, which like its slimy equivalent has been chopped in two and continues to move around. In the case of Koobface one half is heading for Facebook while the other attacks MySpace...

Two variants of the same new worm, Networm.Win32.Koobface.a (the MySpace muncher) and  Networm.Win32.Koobface.b (the Facebook fancier) have been detected in the wild by researchers at security vendor Kaspersky Lab.

The worms carry a malicious payload, no surprise there then. Perhaps even less of a surprise these days, that payload is primarily to transform your computer into a zombie component of a botnet.

So watch out, social networkers, you might be assimilated. Thankfully, though, resistance is not useless. OK, enough with the Borg references, the point being that you can avoid getting slurped up by Koobface and its ilk just by using your common sense.

After all, when was the last time your sensible and straight-laced Facebook Friend sent you a message with a title anything like Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf On The Street? Or, for that matter, why would your grammatically correct brother-in-law want to let you know that My friend catched you on hidden cam?

Of course, the trouble is that common sense tends to fly out the window when you log in to your social networking service. Stupid messages and status updates seem to be the order of the day, and the Koobface authors have cottoned on to this.

So Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.a will spread when the user accesses their MySpace account by creating a range of commentaries to their friends accounts. Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.b, on the other hand, creates spam messages which it sends to the infected users' friends on Facebook.

These messages and comments will includes links to a video clip at what appears to be YouTube. The user will actually get redirected to a Russian site, and the usual 'you need to download this version of Flash Player' trick is then employed to download the malware executable.

What does Kaspersky Lab have to say about Koobface and the dangers of social networking worms in general? Find out on page 2...

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