Virus in Social Media?

We all have encountered virus in daily Cyber life, But in Social Media? It's happening.Recently I got to know about these kind of virus that could easily trap you with an innocently tempting cover.
The KoobFace virus

• The name itself is an anagram of Facebook. It has the ability to create Fb accounts on its own and post links everywhere.
• Comes through mails with a video link attachment from your contacts, asking you to watch the video.
• Clicking that link will redirect you to a web page, where it will offer the specific video but will ask you to install a software to watch it. And if you accept it, Koobface will successfully get into your system.
• And the specialty of Koobface is, it could make anything happen to your system including downloading and running any random software without your permission.

All in all, it gets total access to your PC.
So in short, never get into any mails or posts that may contain such short video links.That might keep you safe.Anybody who knows any other virus that strolls through the Social Networks? Let me know in the replies below.:)

It's a usual one except the fact that it creates social media accounts itself. :(

It is a nice article Gobi. If I accidentally clicked a link containing virus, what should I do safeguard my system from virus/ to reduce the effect of virus?

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Originally Posted by Inthuja

If I accidentally clicked a link containing virus, what should I do safeguard my system from virus/ to reduce the effect of virus?

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• The first ever thing for you to do is DISCONNECT your INTERNET. Don't keep you connected if you're a victim of a phishing attack. It may take you to disasters.
• Second use a trusted Malware removal tool and scan your system. If anything found, remove it with the support of the tool.
• Depending on the malware, you might or might not lose some date. (that completely depends on the way the malware works)
• If it's a worse worse scenario, then you'd better format your hard and install a fresh copy of OS.

SAFETY TIP: In case you needed a format like above, you might lose your data. So as a precaution, always have a mechanism to have a backup of you critical data. There are so many applications which syncs your data with an online storage, so you can have it later on, or else you can go with some other methods of offline backing up techniques. But make sure you have backed up date before you get compromised.

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Originally Posted by MDilbara

• The first ever thing for you to do is DISCONNECT your INTERNET. Don't keep you connected if you're a victim of a phishing attack. It may take you to disasters.
• Second use a trusted Malware removal tool and scan your system. If anything found, remove it with the support of the tool.
• Depending on the malware, you might or might not lose some date. (that completely depends on the way the malware works)
• If it's a worse worse scenario, then you'd better format your hard and install a fresh copy of OS.

SAFETY TIP: In case you needed a format like above, you might lose your data. So as a precaution, always have a mechanism to have a backup of you critical data. There are so many applications which syncs your data with an online storage, so you can have it later one, or else you can go with some other methods of offline backing up techniques. But make sure you have backed up date before you get compromised.

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That is awesome, but sounds like there's no other easy way to escape from malware attacks.

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Originally Posted by Gobi

We all have encountered virus in daily Cyber life, But in Social Media? It's happening.Recently I got to know about these kind of virus that could easily trap you with an innocently tempting cover.
The KoobFace virus

• The name itself is an anagram of Facebook. It has the ability to create Fb accounts on its own and post links everywhere.
• Comes through mails with a video link attachment from your contacts, asking you to watch the video.
• Clicking that link will redirect you to a web page, where it will offer the specific video but will ask you to install a software to watch it. And if you accept it, Koobface will successfully get into your system.
• And the specialty of Koobface is, it could make anything happen to your system including downloading and running any random software without your permission.

All in all, it gets total access to your PC.
So in short, never get into any mails or posts that may contain such short video links.That might keep you safe.Anybody who knows any other virus that strolls through the Social Networks? Let me know in the replies below.:)

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Good post @Gobi. I thought of adding some more points to it.

If we look at it in a broader way (not just Koobface), these attacks comes under the category of Phishing attacks. following tips can be used to be preventive of Phishing attacks. (I'm not gonna write what and how phishing attacks come)

• As @Gobi said, think before clicking any link. Don't click blindly out of curiosity. Of course you can click on trusted sites. This is how you can verify its trusted. Never download anything if the below is not verified.

- Check for the "https" in the address.
Attachment 77

- Check for the lock mark in the address
Attachment 78

- You can check further by checking the extended trust by the GREEN lock with company name
Attachment 79

- Check for the SSL Certificate and see if it's from a valid Certificate Authority (CA)
Attachment 80

There are many more tech ical ways of being prevent. But the above are easy for a non-tech person to follow.

Hope this was informative

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Originally Posted by Gobi

but sounds like there's no other easy way to escape from malware attacks.

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The only possible and practical way is to educate the users and give awareness to be preventive. Coz the more we become smarter, the hackers also becomes ever smarter than us. So we have to learn and be preventive. No other options.

It's always a human attribute which leads to a compromise.