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Tag: worms

  • Tumblr Invaded By Worm Affecting Thousands Of Blogs

    Reports have been rampant today about a worm spreading on Tumblr, taking over thousands of accounts.

    Tumblr addressed the issue twice on Twitter: once to let everyone know they were aware of the issue, and a second time to say that the issue had been resolved:

    Update: Tumblr has now posted to its staff blog:

    This morning, some of you may have noticed a spam post appearing repeatedly on your Dashboard and on the blogs of a few thousand affected accounts. We quickly identified the source, removed the posts, and restored service to normal.

    No accounts have been compromised, and you don’t need to take any further action.

    Our sincere apologies for the inconvenience. As always, we are going to great lengths to make sure this type of abuse does not happen again.

    The worm brought with it a message about a “GNAA Video” post. TheNextWeb reports:

    So, what is the GNAA? The acronym stands for the Gay N***** Association of America, an anti-blogging Internet trolling organization. One of the member’s Twitter accounts points to the bronies Tumblr tag as a way to keep track of all the blogs being affected. The latest count is over 8,600 uniques.

    Meanwhile, ComputerWorld reports on an Instagram vulnerability on iPHone, which allows for accounts to be taken over.

  • Facebook IM App Passing Around Nasty Little Worm

    The security scouts at Trend Micro had identified an instant messaging worm that is being passed around via social networking sites, namely Facebook. The worm is said to present as a private message that includes a link to a site that is said to contain some images but the website actually contains a zip file that unleashes some rotten malware onto your unsuspecting computer.

    According to Trend Micro, the link is a shortened URL that directs people to an archive file, May09-Picture18.JPG_www.facebook.com.zip, which contains the malicious file May09-Picture18.JPG_www.facebook.com. The malware has been identified as Steckct-EVL, which is classified as a high risk for damage potential and distribution potential although it’s not listed as destructive.

    Another noteworthy routine is that this worm downloads and executes another worm, one detected as WORM_EBOOM.AC. Based on our analysis, WORM_EBOOM.AC is capable of monitoring an affected user’s browsing activity such as message posting, deleted posted messages and private messages sent on the following websites such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, WordPress, and Meebo. It is also capable of spreading through the mentioned sites by posting messages containing a link to a copy of itself.

    As much of a pain as this is for Facebook users, when a network like this has nearly 1 billion users, it’s too rich of a breeding ground for these types of nasty malware incidents. Earlier this year, Facebook identified the five hackers who were behind the Koobface worm that is said to have netted the “web gang” millions of dollars.

    Fortunately, if you think your PC has contracted the Steckct-EVL worm, Trend Micro provides the necessary steps for removing the insidious bastard.