Nov182010

Facebook exploits

Published by dave at 9:24 PM under computers | Current Threats | Malware | Internet | Daily Tips | Facebook

You may have read this week how Facebook had disabled a number of accounts of people in an attempt to weed out spam accounts (particularly targeting "female" user accounts).   In what appears to be an attempt to exploit the fact many legitimate accounts were inadvertently disabled, hackers have spammed an attack pretending to be from Facebook notifying you that your account password has been changed.  While there are a number of subject lines associated with the spam, they all carry a ZIP file with malicious payload known as Mal/BredoZp-B, and the Trojan horse contained within as Troj/Agent-PLG.

Once again this is an attempt to cause havoc through social engineering and deception.  Do not open the attached file or any attachment that seems suspicious.  Here is sample text of the email you may receive:

Good afternoon.

A spam is sent from your Facebook account.
Your password has been changed for safety.

Information regarding your account and a new password is attached to the letter.
Read this information thoroughly and change the password to complicated one.

Thank you for your attention,
Facebook Service.

 

 



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Nov182010

Black Friday and the looming Google Instant Security threat

I have previously warned that "Google Instant" may pose serious risks.   Now news from Pandalabs of some serious malicious code that could well spoil your holidays ahead.

Though mundane, this is "Must Read" material.



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Mar162009

Today's Tip: Update to AntiSpyware XP2009

Last week I alerted you to a common trojan trap that is surfacing all over the web under a variety of names. AntiSpyware XP2009 is just one name. Rather than update the original post, I have decided to post this once again because of the EXTREME DANGER this type of threat poses.

A colleague of mine recently passed away. While searching for news about him, I navigated to a site where I was greeted by this pop-up window:


AV360 Pop Up


Pretty scary huh? It gets better. It matters not how you exit the pop-up message, as soon as you do, a fake "scan" animation is displayed that makes it appear your system is being scanned. It is important to note that the script is NOT PERFORMING A SCAN. What you see is only an animated webpage made to resemble an actual scan. A full size screen capture of this scan animation is displayed here
So how do we know the scan is a fake? Well for starters, the fake animation displays only 2 Local Disk drives and a DVD-RAM drive. In reality, there are 9 Disk drives on my computer and one DVD-RW drive. Secondly, while "local disk" is the name Windows assigns Hard Disk Drives during installatioin, I rename all my drives to unique names. It's a neat little trick that can help you spot these fake screens. Renaming HDD's to a friendly name will be the subject of a future post. And lastly, we know this is a fake screen because the layout is based on a Windows XP Explorer window, I'm actually using Windows 7 Beta on this computer.
Finally, take a close look at the final screen capture below:


AV360 Pop Up


Under no circumstances should you select the "OK" option to install. Clicking on the X, or the Alt-F4 keystroke combination just puts you in a repeated error message loop. Close the actual BROWSER window to cut this trojan off at the knees.
It's easy to be fooled by these tricks and a lot harder to clean up after, so surf smart. Don't panic when you see a pop up like this, but if you get taken in, call the St. George UT PC doctor for disaster cleanup.



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Mar062009

Today’s Tip: Beware “Antispyware XP2009″

 

Several acquaintances of mine have been stung in recent months by the rogue program “Antispyware XP2009″. This program relies on social engineering to dupe you into installing a malicious program to then extort money.

 

 

Looks legitimate right? Here’s how it works. You visit a website, and without warning, an ominous message appears on screen alerting you that spyware or a virus has been detected on your machine with the instructions to “click now to clean”. Unwittingly falling victim to this ploy can be costly in more ways than one.

When you “click to clean”, this trojan installs Antispyware XP2009 on your system “for free”. After you perform their “free” scan, the software instructs you that you must purchase a license to remove the infected items it “finds”. Unfortunately the one infected or malicious item it never finds is itself. Paying the ransom, er, “license fee” does nothing except extort money from you. In addition, Antispyware XP2009 destroys legitimate program executable files, rendering popular programs such as Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer, Office applications and more, useless.

 

 

There are several copycat variants of this malware with similar names so surf cautiously! Your best defense against this type of attack is your own common sense. Never “click here” to clean anything that is presented unsolicited on any website. Also make sure you have a robust security solution that detects rogue applications and viruses in real time. Of course having robust anti-virus and anti-spyware are useless if threat definitions are not updated regularly, and that will be the subject of a future post! If you do fall victim to Antispyware XP 2009, contact the St. George PC Doctor to restore your computer’s health today.



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