Koobface worm body count breaks record

The Facebook menace known as the Koobface has made a resurgence.

McAfee detected nearly 120,000 samples of the worm during the first three months of this year.

The quarter before, McAfee researchers saw fewer than 40,000 instances of Koobface. 

Koobface was discovered in 2008 propagating on social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, through socially engineered messages sent to those on an infected user's “friend's” list.

The messages appear as if they are coming from the victim, but once targeted users click on the links contained in messages, they also become compromised by the worm and have their account credentials stolen. 

Back in 2011, researchers at security firm Websense discovered another Koobface campaign on Facebook where attackers tried to obfuscate the URL in malicious messages to avoid detection by security vendors.

McAfee did not say who is behind the renewed threat or if they are using new tactics to spread the worm, but the spike in Koobface infections keeps with its unrelenting history despite botnet takedown efforts.

This article originally appeared at scmagazineus.com