New VIRUS on Facebook, MySpace & other Social-Network

Facebook has been one of the most successful and widely known social-networking site today. But beware, new worm is lurking around to steal the identities of the friends, fans and brands that connect though the social-networking site.

Trend Micro showed that several new hoax applications are trying to trick members in giving their usernames and passwords. Facebook also seen several security threats. It's surely a new variant of the Koobface worm, installing malware on the victim's computers who clicked on a link to a fake YouTube video. Computers can also be infected by other malware and downloaded unknowingly by a user when visiting malicious Web sites based from Trend Micro.

As the worm developers execute the malware, it searches for cookies created by online social networks. The latest was Facebook and even MySpace.

This worm uses the social-networking cookies and makes a DNS query to check IP addresses of remote domains. Once connected, the bad-guys can now remotely perform commands on the victim's computer.

The worm's agenda is to transform the victim's computer like a zombie and form botnets for its purpose. Koobface attempts to do this by composing a message and sending it to the user's friends. The message contains a link to a Web site where a copy of the worm can be downloaded by unsuspecting friends then the cycle repeats itself.

Facebook and other social-networking sites are the targets since Facebook alone has more than 175 million users, which makes it a good target. I know that this worm will continue to plague social-networking sites as long as the bad-guys get what they wanted. People can protect themselves by updating their antivirus software and thinking twice before clicking on links from friends. Never install a codec from some random Web site as well.