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Monday, March 2, 2009

Facebook under attack of two malware applications

Two malware applications are suspected to have hit Facebook in the duration of a week, possibly reading thousands of personal details. The latest application is said to be posting notifications on user's profile that say, "[Name on friend list] has just reported you to Facebook for violating our terms of service - this is your official warning. Click here to find out why you were reported." This statement will surely make the victim to click on the link. The link in the notification leads to an application named "Facebook - closing down" which, once installed, will send the same message to every one of the users' friends The first application hit users over the weekend, sending out notifications to users that one of their friends had "faced some errors" when checking their profile. Users were prompted to click a link to view the error message.Facebook applications need to ask the users' permission before they can access the personal information on their profile, but the rogue application redesigned the permission-requesting page so users did not know what they were clicking on. The application then suggested that users check their friends profiles for errors, helping the application to spread.