Chicago (IL) – An unspecified number of Facebook members recently found themselves the target of a nefarious phishing scheme designed to steal user names and passwords. A slew of e-mail messages, appearing to have originated from Facebook, attempted to redirect users to a malicious website that resembled the Facebook login page.
“We’ve already blocked www.fbstarter.com from being shared on Facebook, which stops this from spreading. Now, we’re deleting that URL from walls and inboxes across Facebook. This is an advantage we have over email. Gmail can’t delete spam sent to Hotmail,” a Facebook spokesperson told TG Daily. “We’ve also blocked access to the URL so if someone does find it on Facebook (on their wall, in their inbox, or in an email notification) it won’t send them to the destination. Finally, we’ll automatically reset the password on any account that sent the malicious link. Thus, the data becomes useless to the bad
guys very quickly because the passwords they’ve stolen have been changed.”
The spokesperson suggested that users make sure their address bar is set to www.facebook.com “and nothing else” during the log-in process. In addition, Facebook members are encouraged to be “very suspicious of any message, post or link” that requires an additional log-in.
“That should not happen,” said the spokesperson.
The popular social networking site has also selected MarkMonitor AntiFraud Solutions to help protect Facebook users against malware attacks. MarkMonitor reportedly adds spoofed URLs to their browser blacklists and work to get the sites taken down.
“The meteoric success of Facebook makes it a natural target for malware attacks that seek to capitalize on their trusted and recognizable brand,” explained Frederick Felman of MarkMonitor. “Our experience protecting Fortune 500 companies, as well as our close day-to-day interaction with Facebook’s own dedicated security team, allows us to expertly address Facebook’s concerns about malware and phishing, and to help protect their platform and their users from ongoing attacks.”
