Facebook hit by virus

VIRUS WRITERS have come up with malware that is targeted uniquely at the social notworking site Facebook.

"Koobface" that uses the social network's messaging system to infect PCs, then tries to gather sensitive information such as credit card numbers.

The other social networking site, MySpace was hit by an earlier version of Koobface in August and used security technology to eradicate it.

Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said in an e-mail said that a few other viruses have tried to use Facebook in similar ways to propagate themselves, however very few people got infected.

However Craig Schmugar, a researcher with McAfee said that social notworking attacks were on the rise, relative to other threats like e-mails.

Koobface spreads by sending notes to friends of someone whose PC has been infected.

The messages, with subject headers like, "You look just awesome in this new movie," direct victims to a third-party site where they are asked to download what it claims is an update of Adobe's Flash player.

Downloading the software means that users end up with an infected computer, which then takes users to contaminated sites when they try to use search engines from Google, Yahoo, MSN and Live.com, according McAfee. µ

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