Recent facebook attacks and how to protect yourself

These days  there has been a significant increase of explicit material of violent and porn nature being posted on users walls or through messages. Though facebook is constantly under such attacks and have been handling those threats aptly the last week was a good one for the spammers and scammers.

Most of the users have gone through such posts : Check out the spider under this girl's skin! You won't believe what this dad found on his daughter's computer! . I bet you can't watch this video for more than 15 seconds! And the list goes on.

Most of these attacks uses a  technique called click jacking. The fake links looks like regular Facebook posts, often posted from friends we would normally trust to only post good links. On clicking these links a JavaScript command is executed, that causes a user's computer to perform a program that spreads the link even farther .The posts are designed to be interesting and to flare up the curiosity within us.

But this might not end only with spreading.T hey often come armed with malware, which is dropped on the user's computer when clicked. Malware can perform malicious functions on our computers like stealing our passwords and personal information or even more.

Protecting yourself

Though Facebook declared that it has quarantined the malicious accounts and pages behind the attack, but it also offered some simple tips to help users safeguard themselves in the future. Facebook says:

·         Don’t ever copy and paste code into your browser’s address bar unless you’re confident the source is legit.

·         Make sure your browser is up to date.

·         Report anything weird that you see on Facebook using the “report” links throughout the social network.

·         Don’t click any links that look too good to believe or claims weird things.

If you suspect that malware has already gotten a hold of your Facebook account, or if you're seeing unwanted spam, there are three simple steps to attempt to make your account secure again.

Change your password. This can be done by visiting your account settings. Be sure to use a strong password with a mix of numbers, symbols, capital and lowercase letters and no dictionary words if possible.

• While you're in your settings, remove any unwanted Facebook apps. This could be the culprit, or the malware could have installed an app without your knowledge.
• Run a virus and malware scan on your entire system with updated antivirus.

A little caution on the users part will keep such attacks at bay since most of the attacks have used  user affinity to interesting stuffs . Stay informed about the latest spams and attacks and donot share anything just because it looks quite obvious.Stay informed stay  secure.