Facebook malware hits netizens

A malware being propagated through social networking site Facebook has been spread in the cyber space around the world. With a large number of Facebook users from India, users from the nation are one of the worst affected because of this malware. Other than stealing personal information, it also has further control over the account.

The malware was detected this weekend. Experts from the Kaspersky Lab found that Facebook users started receiving malicious chat messages, and the messages were sent from people who were on their friends’ list.

The message carried a subject ‘Father crashes and dies because of THIS message posted on his daughters profile wall!’ This was followed by a short link. Experts suspected that the malware was circulated and made by some person who is not a native English speaker, as the apostrophe was missing in the word ‘daughters’ in the subject.

As the message was sent by friends, users easily fell prey to the trick and clicked on the message. The link took the user to a chain of redirections, with a malicious Facebook application showing up on the screen and requesting several permissions.

Kaspersky Lab expert Stefan Tanase said: “The application has a random name. It accesses users’ basic information like friends’ list and Facebook chat. It then sends the same message to online friends on the user’s list.”

He added: “Further, the user is redirected to another page. Here, he is asked to take an anti-spam verification test. He is also asked to take a quiz in which he is asked questions like ‘How stupid are you?’, ‘What’s your true love?’ or ‘Spyphone’.”

The monetisation part follows once the quiz is over. The user is asked to send an SMS to a number in his own country to seek answers to questions in the quiz. This SMS costs around 3 Euros. But users fell prey to the trick, as the number looked like it is from the same country.

An IT expert said: “Though the money lost is not much, the users end up losing their vital private information which is used to propagate the malware. It can further be used in future by cyber criminals for several other scams that they float in the cyber space.”

The country worst affected by this malware, according to the Kaspersky Lab report, is Ukraine where around 24.22% of the total affected user base has been targeted till date. It is followed by India where 16.22% of users have been victims. The third on the list is the United States of America where 13.03% users were affected.