- Protect your computer from bugs, worms, and viruses
Yet, another virus (worm) has been making its way through the rabbit warrens of Facebook and Myspace. Although the “Koobface” worm was discovered back in August and Facebook has posted information on their site to warn their users, the worm continues to work its way into the accounts of the overly-trusting or careless members of these social networking sites. Facebook has now put up information on its site to guide its victimized members through virus removal procedures for the “Koob” virus. Since an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, here’s some information that should help your to protect your computer and the folks in your address book from falling victim to this latest hacker.
The “Koobface” virus (also called the “Koob” virus) uses an e-mail to lure the unsuspecting with a provocative message inviting them to view a video. When the user attempts to start the video, a message says the user must update their flash player in order to view the video. Therein, lies the problem. The worm is cloaked in a “flash_player.exe” file and that’s when the “fun” begins. According to an article on the PC World website, the virus transforms the victimized user’s machine into a zombie computer to build a botnet, the purpose of which is to proxie all HTTP traffic, hijacking the results of popular search engines and diverting them to lesser known search sites. The worm propagates itself through the victim’s e-mail address book, sending the bogus message to the user’s friends, family and business associates. The e-mail thus flies under the radar for most e-mail spam programs and suspicions of the recipient since it appears to be coming from an approved source.
The provocative subject line on these bogus e-mails frequently contains misspellings or grammatical errors. Some of the reported ones read:
“My friend catched you on hidden cam. Checkk it out.”
“lool yoour blushing afce is so funny.”
And, my personal favorite:
“Paris Hilton tosses dwarf on the street”
