Facebook has claimed to identify a gang “Koobface” that is involved in cyber attacks on the users of its site. An investigation carried out by Facebook and a number of independent internet security agencies including Sophos, and Kaspersky.
Koobface is a gang of five persons which have been said belonging to Russia and they are operating fairly openly in St. Petersburg.
Koobface is a computer worm firstly noticed in 2008 when it started its expansion by sending fake messages to Facebook and other popular social networks’ users and to their friends on their behalf. If the recipient of the message clicked on a spam link then they were directed to a website to update their Adobe Flash software.
Those who downloaded the software gave in the control of their computer and recruited it into a “botnet”. It is further followed by sending fake antivirus software advertisements by the Russian gang.
Kasperskyp reports that 800,000 computer systems were compromised in 2010. Koobface gang has also netted $2 million between June 2009-June 2010 period.
However, Facebook has not yet clearly mentioned the names of the persons involved due to some legal reason and knowing that there is lack of law enforcement against the cybercriminals at the present.
Source: telegraph
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