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'Like' Button Worm Weaseling Through Facebook

by Amar Toor on June 1, 2010 at 09:25 AM

Facebook 'Like' Button Worm
The latest worm to squirm its way around Facebook, like most, lures in its users by taking advantage of a temptation that's become fundamentally human: the 'like' button. The virus hit the social network over the holiday weekend, and, according to Sophos, has already victimized hundreds of thousands of users. Fortunately, though, it's pretty easy to tell which of your friends has fallen prey to the scam, simply by the titles of the links they supposedly 'like.' Don't click if you come across a pal who 'likes' a link with one of the following titles: 'LOL This girl gets OWNED after a POLICE OFFICER reads her STATUS MESSAGE,' 'This man takes a picture of himself EVERYDAY for 8 YEARS!!,' The Prom Dress That Got This Girl Suspended From School,' or 'This Girl Has An Interesting Way Of Eating A Banana, Check It Out!'

If you do, you'll be directed to a blank page, with a simple message reading, 'Click here to continue.' In fact, clicking anywhere on the page will plant the same link on your Facebook profile, with your own thumbs-up next to it, and the entire process starts again. Sophos has reportedly detected that user pages are being infected by Troj/lframe-ET, and points out that this current worm is spreading in much the same way that the 'Fbhole' virus permeated the network last month. What makes this particular outbreak so unique, though, is that it's not entirely unbelievable. As Sophos mentions, these kinds of stories or links are exactly the kinds of thing most people would like on Facebook, thus rendering them much less suspicious than, say, a 'Sexiest Video' link. But with a little bit of caution and second-guessing (plus following some ground rules), you'll be able to avoid temptation, no matter how harmless it may seem. [From: Sophos]

Tags: facebook, like, LikeButton, LikeButtonWorm, links, malware, security, SocialNetworking, Status, StatusUpdate, top, torjiframe-et, virus, worm, Worms

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