You might be using your Facebook chats to connect with your friends. But hackers are using “your” Facebook chats to spread malware. Yes, it is not through another profile that the scam is spreading.
The hacks being carried out in Facebook Messenger is an increasing menace. It primarily attacks you by messaging you a video link. This link is corrupted and could create a havoc seizing all your secure data.
Of course, if your dear friend sends something to you, you would check it out without a second thought. What if it turns out to be a hack?
You might be left pondering over the how’s and whys of this invasion. Well, it might be carried out by clickjacking technique or through hijacked browsers or via compromised accounts.
Researchers at Kaspersky Labs have noted a cross-platform campaign on Facebook Messenger. This suggests of a video link that you receive, which may direct you to fake websites of popular platforms. It might then lure you to install the malicious software into your devices.
Here the virtual thieves seem to engage in social engineering techniques. That means it might trick you to open the video link dubbed to be from your friend. The message would be labelled as “<your friend name> Video”. This would be accompanied by a bit.ly link.
The URL would lead you a Google doc displaying a video thumbnail in a similar way as a playable movie. Once you click it, you would again be redirected to another customized page. This would depend on your operating system and browser.
For instance, if you are a Mozilla Firefox user, you could witness a fake flash update. If you tap on download key, a Windows executable box would open up. This, however, would be the adware firmware.
If you have your default browser as the Google Chrome, you would be redirected to a YouTube-like page. This means that it would display the logo and branding like the official YouTube page. Still, it would be a fake platform. Next it might load an error message and trick you to install a malignant Chrome extension.
In your Apple Mac OS X Safari, you would likely see a similar pattern like in the Firefox. The adware would be presented to you as OSX executable.dmg file. The same goes for your Linux OS as well.
Besides that, no Trojan or other exploits are being downloaded by this means. Although it points out that the cyber-attackers might be making huge money with this agenda. A lot of Facebook accounts seem to have noticed this malicious adware.
If you receive any message of this sort, kindly don’t click open the link. Don’t become a victim of such malware attacks. Ignore the message or delete it completely. Your friend would not dupe you, but hackers can. Make sure that your anti-virus is also up-to-date.
