Top computer security company AVG Technologies is warning people about rogue Facebook applications which are doing the rounds at the moment.

The rogue applications were said to be part of an aggressive and co-ordinated attack by hackers during the weekend of 15/16 May 2010.

In one period alone – from midnight to 9am on 15 Saturday – AVG spotted and dealt with 300,000.

Talking about the rogue Facebook applications Roger Thompson, AVG’s Chief Research Officer, said:
“This latest issue really underscores how powerful, while at the same time vulnerable, social networking applications are. This attack was actually stunning in terms of scale.

“Facebook is very responsive to threats when we identify them, and removing these applications as soon as they find them, but they’re still able to generate huge traffic, just because of the viral nature of social networks. It is staggering how many threats were propagated before they were stopped.

The rogue Facebook applications attack come wrapped in a time-honoured trap: a picture of a girl in a bikini which encourages the victim to innocently install an adware-supported viewer. The viewer is not viral in nature say AVG and it has been seen in various forms.

The rogue Facebook applications are coming in waves, with AVG saying that the peak before the weekend in question was about 80,000 and then had died to around a few hundred by Friday 14 May. However, that quickly climbed to 200,000 as the weekend started and the attack mounted in ferocity.

To put the rogue Facebook applications attack in context, the second largest attack registered at the same time, some anti-spy software, lodged 24,000 detections.

As Mr Thompson from AVG added about the rogue Facebook applications:
“Interestingly, they launched it on a Saturday. I guess they figure we don’t watch on the weekend, but malcode researchers are all cut from the same cloth as Inspector Gadget… we’re always on duty.”

When it comes to such rogue Facebook applications, AVG warned that people should employ a link scanner which alerts you if a page, or link, is bad. Furthermore, if you have to install a viewer to watch, then walk away. This is a sign that things might not be as they seem. Never download viewers via a link.

Guest Article by Neil Camp

The computer security giant McAfee has identified which Internet searches are most dangerous to computer safety and which are the safest.

McAfee’s report, entitled ‘The Web’s Most Dangerous Search Terms’ claimed that dangerous Internet searches include searching for things such as free music or screensavers. These search terms are used by cybercriminals to ensnare web users and lead them to their own websites.

Once a web surfer has visited this website, they are vulnerable to downloads that infect your computer, such as spyware which can help reveal private bank details to hackers and other cybercriminals.

McAfee’s report also identifies that these dangerous search terms are changing with regard to the new global economic environment. With higher numbers of people being made redundant due to the economic slump affecting so many, cybercriminals are now using search results to target people looking to save money or find a job working at home.

Jeff Green, senior vice president of McAfee Product Development & Avert Labs said: “Cybercriminals are smart. Like sharks smelling blood in the water, hackers will create related Web sites laden with adware and malware whenever a particular topic increases in popularity. Unsuspecting consumers are then tricked into downloading malicious software that leads them to blindly hand over their personal assets to cybercriminals.”

The riskiest set of search words, according to McAfee’s report, include keywords to the variation of ‘screensavers’. The research concluded that nearly six out of the top 10 search results for the keyword ‘screensavers’ contained some form of malware.

The riskiest search of the 2,600 most popular keywords that McAfee researched was ‘lyrics’, with the risk factor rising to one in two.

The research concluded, however, that the word Viagra was one of the least risky of keywords. The keywords with the safest risk profile included search words related to health and the current economic climate.

McAfee’s report also indicated global variations on these risks. Many of these countries had keyword categories that ended up exposing web surfers to the higher risk sites. 12 countries were exposed to an overall higher risk than McAfee’s average, including Mexico and India. McAfee’s report therefore pointed to cybercriminals targeting those outside of the U.S.

McAfee gave caution to home workers and to those looking to save money: if a result contains the word ‘free’ it has a 21.3% chance of infecting a computer with spyware, spam, adware and other malicious cyber threats. The search ‘work from home’ is four times riskier than the average risk given for all popular terms.

To protect against these vulnerabilities, McAfee SiteAdvisor Technology has been designed. This rates every trafficked site on the Internet to conduct automated tests. Web sites are ranked using coloured ratings, so that users are knowledgeable as to what they are clicking on. McAfee have also recently announced the Cybercrime Response Unit to help arm users against the threat.

Guest Article by Neil Camp