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New Malicious MySpace Friends Plant Viruses

by Tim Stevens on January 17, 2008 at 10:16 AM

In the 'Star Wars' universe, it was Luke Skywalker's Rogue Squadron that was largely responsible for driving back the forces of the evil empire. However, in the world of computing, just about anything labeled "rogue" is a very bad thing indeed. So, reports of "rogue friends" on MySpace don't sound promising, and indeed they are not. Hacked and bogus accounts are nothing new on MySpace, but now they're packing viruses and have the potential to take over your computer.

According to the virus experts at McAfee, this new type of attack seems to be coming from hackers in the Ukraine or Malaysia. Requests from rogue friends look just like any other request, but once accepted, visiting the new friend's profile displays a popup that asks if you would like to download an official update to Windows. The update is, of course, not official, and should you click to download it, you will find yourself infected.

It goes without saying that, just like you shouldn't open e-mail attachments from random people, you should be cautious when accepting random friend requests from people you don't know.

From 'The Daily Mail'

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Tags: Hacking, MySpace, Virus

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