Source: Straits Times. Saturday May 16, 2009 by Reuters

Hackers get Facebook password

Social site wont reveal how many users tricked in phishing attack

Boston : Hackers have launched an attack on Facebook's 200 million users, successfully gathering passwords from some of them in the latest assault on members of the popular social networking site.

Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said on Thursday that the site was in the process of cleaning up damage from the attack.

He said that Facebook was blocking compromising accounts, but declined to say how many accounts had been compromised.

The hackers obtained passwords through what is known as a phishing attack by breaking info accounts of some Facebook members, then sending e-mail messages to friends and urging them to click on links to fake websites,

Those sites were designed to look like the Facebook home page. The victims were directed to log back into the site, but actually logged into the one controlled by the hackers, unwittingly giving away their passwords.

These attacks are generally for identity theft and to spread spam.

The fake domains include www.151.im, www.121.im and www.123.im. Facebook has deleted all references to those domains.

Mr Schnitt said that Facebook's security team believers the hackers intended to collect at larger number of credentials, then use those accounts at later time to send spam hawking fake pharmaceuticals and other goods to Facebook members.

The site fought off a similar attack two years ago, he said.

Privately held Facebook and rival social network MySpace which is owned by News Corps, require senders of messages within the network to members and hide user data from people who do not have accounts. Because if that, users tend to be far less suspicious of messages they receive.

Hackers used a phishing attack last year to spread a malicious virus known as koobface (a reference to Facebook). It was downloaded onto Facebook members' computers when they clicked on a link sent to them uin as email that looked like it had been sent by a friend on Facebook.

Compromised accounts can also be used links to websites that install malicious software oin user' systems. When an infected user checks his bank accounts online, the software can capture his banking credentials -which can ve ultimately used to log into his online bank account.

Cybercriminals have increasingly targeted social networking sites, taking advantage of their rising popularity. by creating scam sites that include their names Facebook, MySpace and Twitter - even though they are not connected to the real sites p they dupe into thinking that their sites are affiliated with the well known networking sites.

SCMagazineUS.com an online magazine dealing with IT security, noted that names such as unblocked.facebookproxy.com or hotbabesofmyspace999.com have been used as phishing websites to gave users into giving sensitive information or downloading malicious code.

It quoted Websense Labs as saying that the lack of users education make the problem worse. As people were used to looking at websites with the words Facebook, MySpace or Twitter in the addresses, he noted it was natural to think those sites were safe.