PinoyLive

Facebook’s Possible Virus & Hacking Attempt on April 10!

by Pinoylive on 10/04/10 at 10:14 pm

Just last night another suspected virus spread out like fire with a video posted randomly to almost all my friends’ walls, and guess who sent it? It was sent by me that even if I have taken so much memory pills, it is something I don’t remember sending out nor something I would never send out. The video is an allegedly video of “Barack & Hillary Sex Scandal.”  When you click the video, it won’t direct you to playing the video but would ask you to click another tab that would allow the culprit to access your account. We immediately reported it to Facebook and just this morning as I was browsing my walls and the rest, I could no longer see the said video. Maybe Facebook already deleted it from all users.

Immediately upon learning that this might be a virus or a hacking attempt, I posted below to my affected friends’ walls, and on my status wall:  “WARNING: DO NOT OPEN ANY VIDEOS POSTED ON YOUR WALLS! SPECIFICALLY THE VIDEO TAGGED, “OBAMA – CLINTON” SEX SCANDAL! DELETE IT AS SOON AS U RECEIVED IT! SNOPES* JUST CONFIRMED THAT IT IS A TROJAN WORM VIRUS CALLED KOOBFACE. IT WILL STEAL INFO, INFEST YOUR SYSTEM AND SHUT IT DOWN.”

*Snope is officially the Urban Legends Reference Pages, a web site discussing urban legends, Internet rumors, e-mail forwards, and other stories of uncertain or questionable origin.

The video is addressed personally to the user but some would easily suspect it something unusual because, for example, for someone like a brother whom you call “kuya” (elder brother in Tagalog), the video allegedly “from you” is addressed to his first name and reads, “Florentino, you must see this.” The recipient would immediately wonder how this younger sister would call him by his first name, unless maybe she’s real angry at him.  I noticed it too suspicious also when it is posted on a friend’s wall and addressed to her with a smiley character just exactly at it is associated with her account’s name, copy pasted.  The hacker or virus spreader programmed the said posting of video to capture your first name and randomly choose among all your friends. 

Thanks to my friends, Chiqui and Siegrid, and to another friend’s friend that I failed to get the name, who posted warnings about this.  Terrorism is everywhere and internet is never an exemption, so be very careful. 

Since I have experienced this just last night,  here are some important things I did as first aids to the suspected hacking or virus spreading:

1. If you suspect it as an unusual thing posted on your wall, approach first your friend who sent it to you;

2. Once confirmed that it was not sent by your friend, report it to the admin of the site, specifically for Facebook users, there is a tab to click to report either a scam / phishing, suspected virus, etc. or simply go to this link http://www.facebook.com/security

3. Change your password immediately whether you clicked on it or to make sure you won’t get hacked. Go to “Account settings” and change. Logout, and confirm the password change from your email by clicking on the link provided by your site team or admin. 

From the Facebook team: “Please be cautious when clicking links on the site, even if they were sent by friends. Make sure that you always access the site from a legitimate Facebook page with the facebook.com domain. If something looks or feels suspicious, go directly to www.facebook.com to log in.”

Lesson learned, more specifically to me, do not open malicious videos! And do not be easily deceived by beautiful covers or interesting titles, and lastly, do not just accept whatever is fed to your pages.