Koobface Worm in the News

Koobface, an anagram of Facebook, is a computer worm that targets the users of the social networking websites Facebook, MySpace, hi5, Bebo, Friendster and Twitter. Koobface ultimately attempts, upon successful infection, to gather sensitive information from the victims such as credit card numbers. It was first detected in December 2008 and a more potent version appeared in March 2009.

Koobface spreads by delivering Facebook messages to people that are 'friends' of someone on Facebook whose computer has already been infected. The messages contain innocuous subject headers such as "Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf On The Street", "LOL", "My friend catched [sic] you on hidden cam", and "My home video :)" followed by a link. Upon receipt, the message directs the recipients to a third-party website unaffiliated with Facebook where they are prompted to download what is purported to be an update of the Adobe Flash player. If they download and execute the file, they will infect their computer with Koobface. Koobface then commandeers their surfing activities and directs users to contaminated websites when they attempt to access search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, and Ask.com.

Here is a short news piece on the Koobface worm by Waff.com

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Vivek Ramachandran is a security evangelist and has been working in computer security related fields for the past 7 years. In 2007, Vivek spoke at world renowned conferences Defcon (WEP Cloaking Exposed) and Toorcon (The Caffe Latte Attack). The discovery of the Caffe Latte Attack was covered by CBS5 news, BBC online, Network World etc news agencies.In 2006, Vivek was announced as one of winners of the Microsoft Security Shootout contest held in India among 65,000 participants. He has also been a recipient of a Team Achievement at Cisco Systems for his work on 802.1x and Port Security modules on the Catalyst 6500 switches. Currently he spends all of his time maintaining Security- Freak.Net , SecurityTube.Net and is the co-founder of Axonize. Vivek, is a Bachelor in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.You can contact him at vivek[at]securitytube.net