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Friday, August 01, 2008

Heads up: New worms in MySpace, Facebook

Any social networkers at your house should be aware of the "Koobface" worms, which can turn household computers into remotely controlled "zombies." Computer security firm Kaspersky Lab reports that the worms work this way: A MySpace or Facebook user gets a message or comment from a friend whose computer has already been infected. The messages contain text such as "Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf On The Street"; "Examiners Caught Downloading Grades From The Internet"; "Hello"; "You must see it!!! LOL. My friend catched you on hidden cam"; and "Is it really celebrity? Funny Moments and many others." Inside the messages or comments is a link YouTube (with a ".pl" extension), supposedly to a video clip. "If the user tries to watch it, a message appears saying the user needs the latest version of Flash Player in order to watch the clip. However, instead of the latest version of Flash Player, a file called codesetup.exe is downloaded to the victim’s machine; this file is also a network worm" that probably not only sends the same message to everyone on your child's friends list but is capable of turning that computer into a "bot" that becomes part of a "botnet" that malicious hackers use to commit crimes such as denial-of-service attacks.

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