Number:IRCNE2014052181
Date: 2014-05-05
According to “computerworld”, Symantec has seen another round of a ham-fisted but surprisingly successful attack that targets Facebook users hoping to break into their friends' accounts.
The seed of the scam is a video on Facebook that claims to offer a tool for obtaining login credentials for friends' accounts. Instead, it hacks the person's own account, said Satnam Narang, security response manager for Symantec, in a blog post.
The video directs potential victims to a document on Google Drive that contains a piece of JavaScript code. Users are instructed to paste the code in their browser's console window -- a feature used by developers -- and execute it.
If they do, their Facebook account is hijacked and used to "like" other pages and follow lists, which drives up the illusion of popularity of those pages.
The type of attack is known as "self cross-site scripting," where the user is tricked into running the malicious code themselves rather than finding it on a hacked website.
Facebook has warned against the type of attack and advised that it "gently disables" browser console windows. The social network allows people to re-enable the console.
The whole idea that you can run a piece of code to hack friends' accounts should be enough to alert people that it's a scam, Narang wrote.
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