Messages left on Facebook users’ walls, “are urging members to view a video (which pretends to be hosted on a Google website), but clicking on the link and visiting the webpage takes users to a site which urges them to download an executable to watch the movie,” says UK security firm Sophos.

And when they click it, they’re taken to a bizarre animation with a demented clown waggling his tongue and rolling his protruding eyes.

In other words, Facebook has a serious viral infection.

The upshot?

“Companies will once again be considering whether it’s time to block Facebook in the workplace - not just for the usual productivity reasons, but because of the security threats that sites like this may pose to their enterprise,”says Sophos.

But it isn’t just Facebook. MySpace is also a target.

“See a site that’s interesting – but is really just a phishing expedition – and you get hit with a virus/worm/rootkit,” says ZDNet, going on, “Social engineering makes the security world go around. So what do you do if you’re Facebook or MySpace? You tell folks to be less social.

“Good luck with that folks.”

“I’m not sure why anyone would click on that slop, but I guess some people do,” says the story. Before this latest incident it was an attack on MySpace and Facebook. And why not? Given the social engineering effects a malicious hacker could have a field day.”

Meanwhile, Sophos says the clown .exe is the Troj/Dloadr-BPL Trojan horse, “which in turn downloads further malicious code (detected as Troj/Agent-HJX)”.

. .Stumble It!

Sophos - Facebook users struck by new “court jester” malware attack, August 7, 2008
ZDNet -Facebook and MySpace: Walking the security-social networking line, August 8, 2008

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 9th, 2008 at 7:24 am and is filed under Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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