Worm turns on social networking sites

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 4 Aug 2008 at 11:42

Facebook and MySpace users are being targeted by a new worm, which turns infected machines into zombie PCs on a botnet.

The worm is being spread via messages that appear to be coming from friends' profiles.

The messages contain video clips which when clicked prompt the user to download the latest version of Flash player, however, the user is actually downloading a network worm.

Once infected, the machine will then begin distributing the worm to addresses grabbed from the user's friend list.

Kaspersky has warned that the botnets are likely to be turned to other malicious purposes soon.

"Unfortunately, users are very trusting of messages left by 'friends' on social networking sites. So the likelihood of a user clicking on a link like this is very high", says Alexander Gostev, senior virus analyst at Kaspersky Lab.

"At the beginning of 2008 we predicted that we'd see an increase in cybercriminals exploiting MySpace, Facebook and similar sites, and we're now seeing evidence of this. I'm sure that this is simply the first step, and that virus writers will continue to target these resources with increased intensity."