This notice was sent to all Department of State employees today.
Important information you need to know about emails from social networking sites.
Use Caution on Social Networking Sites
Malicious software is taking advantage of the popularity of social networking sites to spread throughout the Internet. The popular social networking sites that have been targeted include myspace.com, facebook.com, hi5.com, friendster.com, myyearbook.com, bebo.com, and livejournal.com. Users visiting these sites, whether from your home or office PC, should exercise caution and be alert for suspicious e-mails coming from users of these sites that may in fact be generated by malicious software.
One such piece of malicious software that is carrying out these attacks is called "Koobface", which is a worm that spreads itself among users of these websites by generating invitations from an infected user's contact listing. These invitations come in the form of e-mails that are sent to the contacts of the infected user, inviting them to click on a link to view a video. If the recipient clicks on the link, they are then directed to view a video and notified that their version of flash player is out of date. The website will then prompt the user to update their flash player. This update is however, not a legitimate Adobe Flash Player update; instead, it is a link to the Koobface malware file. Upon execution of this file it downloads additional software from websites managed by hackers that can make information on your PC accessible to the bad guys.
Administrators and users are advised to do the following to protect against malicious software attacks:
Install antivirus software and keep the virus signature files up to date. (Administrators and users on privately owned computers)
Use caution when downloading and installing applications. (Users on privately owned computers)
Obtain software applications and updates directly from the vendor's website. (Users on privately owned computers)
Do not follow unsolicited links.
No comments:
Post a Comment