Phishing and Facebook: Two things that just seem to go together

by Steve Ragan - May 15 2009, 17:35

This is getting old. Facebook is once again in the news on security grounds. Like before, this has nothing to do with fresh features or services, it’s another Phishing attack, and one that seems to have hit the social networking site’s users hard.

Over the last 24 hours there have been reports of another Phishing attack on the popular online community, with a spokesperson for the network saying that the attacks are not widespread and are "only impacting a small fraction of a percent of users."

Considering that the "small fraction of a percent" could mean tens of thousands of Facebook users, no amount of PR spin will lessen the damning impact of yet another Phishing issue on the site.

Facebook suffered a similar attack in April, at which point it released a general announcement explaining that, to address the problem, Facebook had hired MarkMonitor to help mitigate Phishing and other related threats, including Malware-based issues.

The press release from April said Facebook hired MarkMonitor to, "supplement its own in-house security efforts in protecting users against malware attacks. Facebook, which already uses MarkMonitor AntiFraud Solutions to help combat Phishing attacks, is expanding its use of MarkMonitor to further protect the Facebook platform and its millions of loyal users against ongoing malware attacks."

So then who should take the blame for this newest problem? Should MarkMonitor suffer the ire of Facebook’s users, or should Facebook’s internal security efforts be opened up to pitchforks and torches?

The recent Phishing attack, as well as all the previous ones, is aimed at stealing personal account information. However, there are other things on Facebook that want more than such information. Some malicious links want money.

Last week, Panda said it had discovered the variant number 56 of the Boface family of Malware. According to Panda, the Worm is spreading largely due to the popularity of Facebook and the potential it offers for reaching numerous users; each of these variants has been designed especially to use this social network to distribute and download Malware. The newest BJ variant uses Facebook to download and install rogue anti-Virus, which displays false infections that users must pay to have removed.

This recent Malware discovery again begs the question: Should MarkMonitor or Facebook’s internal security be taken to task for this recent Phishing scheme?

The reason one of them needs to address the security policy is that so much was made of the new security measures after the Phishing attacks in April that it's hard to grasp exactly why these new safeguards failed to stop the latest issues, including the spread of the Boface Malware.

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