Beware of hacked Facebook applications
By Asavin Wattanajantra in Editorial
Posted in antivirus, AVG, applications, Facebook on
Being the Facebook junkie that I am, I’ve been playing a lot of the applications as I am generally quite a sad person. However, there was a bit of security news today that perhaps maybe should convince me that I need to be a little bit more careful.
Roger Thompson, chief research officer for security firm AVG, writes in a blog post about an attack which looks more serious than the usual way that social networks can sometimes link to hacked sites.
He says that actual Facebook applications are being hacked - not by the actual developers of the apps but bad guys looking to piggy back on their popularity.
He used an example of an app called CityFireDepartment, an online game where a player is supposed to play a role at being a fireman.
Once you have added the app, instead of playing the game the victim is presented with a fake Adobe licence agreement, followed by spyware downloaded onto the computer if you are unpatched.
At first Thompson and his team believed it was a deliberate hack by the developers, but it was actually caused by a outsider who has an iframe into the source code.
The line of malicious code changes once a day, and calls to a different exploit site.
He said: “Initially, we thought that the applications were deliberately acting as lures, but it now seems to us that they are victims themselves.
“The difficult part for them will be to find and plug the hole that the data snatchers are using to hack the applications.”
He names the other Facebook apps affected as MyGirlySpace, Ferrarifone, Mashpro, Mynameis, Pass-it-on, Filinthe and Aquariumlife.
Rated: 60% (2 votes)
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