FTI: Facebook Trojan

Online social websites are far from immune to attacks. The fact that the application is widely used gives crackers the incentive to cook up a Trojan or virus which uses the social networks to propagate.

The latest social network site to be hit is Facebook. According to Mashable,

a so-called “Facebook trojan” is making its way around the site

The trojan masquerades as a Facebook message with a title like “Nice dancing! Shouldn’t you be ashamed?” or “Some0ne thinks your special and has a *Hot_Crush* on you. Find out who it could be”.

The trojan works by disguising itself as an email from facebookmail.com executing a worm W32.Koobface.A (according to Symantec) which will search for cookies on the user’s machine. It will then modify the settings of the user account with links that point to its own malicious website.

Symantec stats on its security page that the Trojan was discovered on August 3, 2008.

Well, the general rule when dealing with online messages or emails is not to be “click-happy”. Clicking all attachments or links without first giving any thought will cause people at lot of trouble sooner or later… This is especially true for .exe files. However, sometimes the best of us will still fall prey to such tricks, either by accident or when we have a bottle of alcohol too much.

For more information about the virus check out Symantec’s security response site

FTI: Backup and Email Security

Was looking through my Google reader archives for something when these two entries caught my eye and I thought I’ll share…

Email Security:

In an October 8, 2008 article, CNET’s Michael Horowitz talks about being smart about Web mail, and securing your access to mail services like Google mail, Yahoo Mail, or Windows Live Mail. Especially with the recent example of Sarah Palin’s Yahoo Mail being hijacked, securing your mail isn’t a paranoid thought..

Anyone involved in backing up computer files knows the importance of testing the recovery process and the same applies with Web mail. The best way to insure that you can recover or reset your password is try it.

very Web mail system asks for personal information as a means of identification should you lose your password. The problem is that this personal information can also be used by a bad guy to learn your password.

So no harm to take a look.. probably users can pick up a few pointers….

Backup

For those looking to syncronise files or backup, can try the free open-source software, Synkron, which is available for all the Windows/Mac/Linux platforms. The interface seems simple enough and according to online reviews, does its job properly. Being cross-platform is definitely an asset. Features include being restore files, which were overwritten during the synchronization and add files and folders to black list to make sure they won’t be synchronized in the future.

Definitely worth a look..

Ciao.