Facebook ‘tagged photo virus’ spreading through email

Updated on

Facebook ‘tagged photo virus’ spreading through email

It has been established that the new photo virus causing stirs on Facebook, is spread through emails. The said emails are similar to the emails that Facebook typically sends to the personal email accounts of users when a user is tagged in a photo.

The only disparity that comes in is that, unlike Facebook’s emails, these emails do not candidly direct the user to the referenced photo. Instead, they lead the user to a scam campaign site that infects unsuspecting users with malicious software. To suffocate any suspicion, the malware fraught website redirects users to Facebook.com in a matter of seconds.

Facebook ‘tagged photo virus’ spreading through email
Source: Pixabay

In as much as many users will not be able to immediately take note of the virus transmitted to their computers, the bogus emails are easily identifiable. This is especially so because of blatant errors in spelling with cases such as ‘Faceboook’ for Facebook.

“Even if you didn’t notice that ‘Faceboook’ was spelled incorrectly, you could have seen by hovering your mouse over the link that it wasn’t going to take you directly to the genuine Facebook website,”  remarked Graham Cluley from Sophos, a Britain-based internet security firm.

In actual fact, Sophos was the one that peeled the mask and unearthed the malicious intent behind the bogus emails. Cluley went on to warn internet users to steer clear of emails that claim to be from Facebook, remarking that such emails were exclusively driven towards infecting users’ computers with malicious software.

How does the virus ridden website infect your computer? According to Sophos, the link in the bogus email leads users to a website that nests a malicious iFrame script which takes advantage of the infamous Blackhole Exploit Kit. To level understanding, it would be in order to unearth the mystery behind the Blackhole Exploit Kit, which also happens to be the current most popular threat in the contemporary Internet space.

Typically, a spammed-out link will lead a user to the exploit kit’s landing page. Here, obscure java scripts will rummage through the user’s computer in an attempt to create gateways for viruses.

This tactful, yet malicious approach has led to many infections. In fact 28 percent of all web threats detected by Sophos, are traceable to the Blackhole Exploit Kit.

At the time of writing, Facebook had not yet given insight on the matter. However, it is very likely that Facebook will comment on the matter.

Facebook today opened trading at $29.41.

Leave a Comment