Facebook ‘photo’ spam containing malware targets social media users

28 Aug 2012

Facebook users have been warned that there’s new spam hitting email inboxes that preted to come from Facebook telling them they’ve been tagged in photo. Instead, once they click on the link they trigger the download of malware.

Sophos has warned that the emails look convincing but the attached ZIP file contains malware designed to allow hackers to take control of their personal computers.

The security software company intercepted the malware as Troj/Agent-XNN.

Last month, experts at SophosLabs saw another malware campaign posing as a Facebook photo tag notification.

On that occasion, the emails did not contain attachments but instead linked to compromised websites which aimed to attack visiting computers with the Blackhole exploit kit.

Below: beware of emails that look like this

sophos

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com