Malware attack on Facebook detected: AVG
19 May 2010
Mumbai: Developer of popular free anti-virus software AVG Technologies today revealed research into a very aggressive, expansive push by rogue applications on Facebook this past weekend.
AVG researchers indicated that from midnight to 9 am EST on Saturday, 15 May 2010, AVG software detected and blocked more than 300,000 rogue applications. That rate was more than three times the rate of the number two for the day for rogue anti-spyware.
''This latest issue really underscores how powerful, while at the same time vulnerable, social networking applications are. This attack was actually stunning in terms of scale,'' said Roger Thompson, AVG's chief research officer. ''Facebook is very responsive to threats when we identify them, and removing these applications as soon as they find them, but they're still able to generate huge traffic, just because of the viral nature of social networks. It is staggering how many threats were propagated before they were stopped.''
Ironically, the attack, which offers a picture of a girl in a bikini to entice the victim to install an adware-supported viewer, was not viral according to AVG researchers, and was first seen in different forms last week.
The software maker said, "AVG's system is set for servers to alert the research team when certain nefarious behaviours and activities are detected.
By 9 am EST, AVG's servers had detected more than 200,000 of this particular threat. By comparison, the second highest detection at that same time was about 24,000 of a particular rogue anti-spy, so at one point, this push was nearly 10 times the number two detection.
