Your Facebook Wall Might Have A Crack In It
Phishing scams grow more sophisticated every day. And as sites like banks and credit card companies become hardened against attack, crafty information thieves find ways to steal information further out in the digital landscape. Facebook users reported a phishing attack on Wednesday that is disguised as a message left for them from a trusted friend on their Facebook "wall," promising juicy pics, of course. The link looks like a standard Facebook link --if you don't notice the slashes have been replaced with periods.
But the link leads to a fake Facebook login page hosted on a Chinese .cn domain. The fake page actually logs the victims into Facebook, but also keeps a copy of their user names and passwords.
Soon after, the hackers post messages containing the same URL on the public "walls" of the users' friends. The technique is a powerful phishing scam, because the link seems to be coming from a trusted friend.
"A lot of phishing is moving out of financial services and going to online web sites that have not installed stronger authentication, sites that are not as close to the money," said Marc Gaffan, who heads product marketing for security firm RSA's Identity and Access Assurance Group.
HotHardware is unsure what to advise you to guard your personal information on a site where you tell the whole world all about yourself; but we'll remind you to be careful out there. Maybe those fat loser middle age guys you read about masquerading as hot teenage girls on social networking sites are the only people safe online now.
But the link leads to a fake Facebook login page hosted on a Chinese .cn domain. The fake page actually logs the victims into Facebook, but also keeps a copy of their user names and passwords.
Soon after, the hackers post messages containing the same URL on the public "walls" of the users' friends. The technique is a powerful phishing scam, because the link seems to be coming from a trusted friend.
"A lot of phishing is moving out of financial services and going to online web sites that have not installed stronger authentication, sites that are not as close to the money," said Marc Gaffan, who heads product marketing for security firm RSA's Identity and Access Assurance Group.
HotHardware is unsure what to advise you to guard your personal information on a site where you tell the whole world all about yourself; but we'll remind you to be careful out there. Maybe those fat loser middle age guys you read about masquerading as hot teenage girls on social networking sites are the only people safe online now.
