Facebook Scam Compelling Victims To Install Malicious Software
A new scam is currently circulating on Facebook: redirecting to fake YouTube links that compel the user to install malicious software. According to Bitdefender, there are over 20.000 unique URLs that redirect their victims to bogus websites.
The trick works like this: one of your friends, whose profile was infected, posts a video recommendation that supposedly contains footage of a woman taking her clothes off in front of a webcam. The link from the respective video shows a pop-up window telling you that your Flash is outdated and asks to update it. If you click yes, then you'll get infected. What makes this scam so successful is the fact that its perpetrators created fake YouTube pages that are very similar to legitimate ones. These fake webpages even have a large number of viewers (over a million) and lots of likes and dislikes.
Instead of updating your Flash, the counterfeit setup will install a Trojan virus on your computer that will instantly gain access to all the information from your web browser. In order to increase its lifespan, the malware will then select 20 friends from your list and send them the rigged video link. Furthermore, it manipulates your Facebook settings so that you will be unable to delete the malicious posts the virus posted under your name. The malicious software works on every browser and is smart enough to automatically close the add-on tab if you try to find the extension responsible for all the unwanted commotion.
The easiest way to recognize that a certain link is a scam, is by the name of the domain you are redirected to. If you check the address, it should be pretty obvious that the website doesn't belong to the Google video service.
