Facebook has been quite the subject lately for all sorts of attacks. The latest attack on users, a worm dubbed “Ramnit”, appears to have captured 45,000 login credentials. While that number out of nearly a Billion users doesn’t sound too bad, factor in hundreds, even thousands of friends for each person, and you’ve got a problem on your hands.
Seculert, a security vendor, was alerted of the problem which found a server holding all of the login credentials. That doesn’t mean that that’s all there were as there could be far more login credentials compromised and hidden elsewhere.
How does the worm work exactly? Computerworld has the scoop :
“The worm, called Ramnit, infects Windows executables, Microsoft Office and HTML files, according to a profile published by Microsoft. It steals user names, passwords, browser cookies and can also function as a backdoor, allowing a hacker to do other malicious actions on an infected computer.”
Insert sarcastic Mac user comment here. All joking aside, the worm didn’t just compromise login credentials, but also affected hundreds of thousands of computers.
“Seculert estimates that some 800,000 computers were infected with Ramnit between September through the end of December. A Symantec report from July 2011 put Ramnit as the most common piece of malware it blocked in June and July 2011.”
As Facebook continues to grow, there will be more and more attacks to get user information and/or distribute unauthorized content via the social network. Users need to be more careful with what they click and with the security of their own computers to help prevent things like this from happening.
