Before clicking a "myspace" link ....

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-13-2004
Before clicking a "myspace" link ....
5
Tue, 03-20-2007 - 11:57pm

From the archives of netcraft.
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2007/01/15/phishing_attacks_continue_to_grow_in_sophistication.html

MySpace Phishing: Attacks targeting social networks present a small percentage of all phishing scams, but became more common in the second half of 2006 as hackers used them to seed botnets through malware distributed on sites like MySpace, LiveJournal and Orkut. MySpace accounts themselves are of limited value, but can serve as a delivery mechanism for keylogging trojans, capturing home computers that may be used for shopping or online banking as well as social networking. Several leading social networks have proven vulnerable to XSS exploits, serving as a laboratory for phishers to test new technical attacks and social engineering techniques. An October attack at MySpace was hosted on a profile page with the username login_home_index_html, and used specially-crafted HTML in order to hide the genuine MySpace content from the page and instead display its own login form. It was the first major attack using a technique known as a reverse cross site request.

Method:
1. Develop a ridiculous story
2. Enlist the readers "help"
3. Provide a myspace hyperlink that doesn't appear to follow the usual URL form.
4. Enlist the reader to post "comments" on a site that you don't know who it actually belongs to.

You may have unknowingly downloaded a keylogger, trojan or other cross site scripting security breach.
(You may notice the pattern on a recent post to this board.)

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-29-2004
Wed, 03-21-2007 - 1:17am
That is why you have a firewall plus a Anti-Virus SW such as Norton plus you keep in current plus who use Anti-Spyware SW plus you run a check on your system frequently.
iVillage Member
Registered: 11-13-2004
Wed, 03-21-2007 - 9:42am
All good tools, but I'd add Zone Alarm to the list.
Yet all of those tools usually won't prevent the spoofed page from aquiring your machine address. Our office servers have been attacked and we have all of the latest greatest preventive measures installed. Myspace has been banned from the network.
I dislike the idea of someone banging away at my firewall, due to some silly made up story about "helping" some teenage boys. There is already quite a bit of evidence posted in the offending thread that this is a phishing expedition.
iVillage Member
Registered: 11-06-2003
Wed, 03-21-2007 - 9:50am

We had a lot of songs on Ares. DH told me something about a Trojan in something one of the kids downloaded from there. Thankfully it was blocked and no damage done (Thank you Nortons), but lost everything we'd had on that set of files.

Also be leery of MySpace as we had DH's friend a site trying to find him some local women, playing around. Had a "girl" from our state said she was in Nigeria and needed a little help. She was trying to scam cash. Wasn't smooth about it at all.

There's always someone trying to get something for nothing.

Sallie

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-17-2005
Wed, 03-21-2007 - 12:21pm
Thanks for that!

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-13-2004
Wed, 03-21-2007 - 1:00pm

I've blocked myspace from all of our home computers for a long time. I understand IE version 7 has an "anti-phishing" component that will supposedly detect non-authentic web pages, but I have no experience with IE7 and myspace.
I have been told that netcraft has developed a toolbar specifically to detect this problem and it has been sucessful with myspace.

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2006/10/27/myspace_accounts_compromised_by_phishers.html

This may be a solution with the kids. Simple, non-technical and does the job?