Facebook under attack, beware of banking trojan

California, Oct 29: Just weeks after Hotmail came under a massive phishing attack, the popular social networking site, Facebook now faces a double whammy with a phishing scheme and banking trojan waiting to plunder the users' computers for personal information and login data.

Security researchers have warned Facebook users against phishing campaign which is part of the global Zeus botnet or Zbot. The malware is reportedly delivering about 1,000 phishing messages per minute per domain over about 30 domains which means 30,000 installed messages per minute, or 500 per second.

The Zbot messages appear to be from Facebook and trap users into downloading malware and submitting personally identifying or financial information.

The attack is initiated with a e-mail stating Facebook is updating its log-in system to make things more secure. The message later asks the user to click on what appears to be an update button embedded in the message.

Clicking on the links take the users to a fake Facebook log-in page, which will have the username already filled in and asks for the password to complete the security the update.

After logging in this way, the users are taken to a site where they are asked to download the Trojan named 'updatetool.exe'. As soon as the user click on the tool the computer is infected with the Zeus Trojan.

The trojan which targets banking accounts and effectively filch personal and financial information, can also attack mobile users in a similarly designed attack.

OneIndia News