The infamous Koobface parasite wants to give you a gift this holiday season that is not-so friendly.

Cyber crooks are abusing Santa Claus with the Koobface worm to deliver a nasty surprise for unwary Facebook users this Christmas.

The infection drops other trojans such as FakeAlert leaving the computer user with other potential issues that may occur at a later date. The mayhem begins with a post on the Facebook user’s Wall. When the user clicks on the link, a fake video player with a Christmas greeting will appear.

A fake message will state that if the user wants to view the video he/she must download the latest version of Adobe Flash. Once the user clicks on “install”, instead of the flash player being downloaded, it runs a variant of W32/Koobface on the system. The user’s browser will now be redirected to corrupt websites harboring malicious files which will be automatically installed and executed on the infected system. Soon a fake message will be displayed stating that the system has been infected with various viruses and that the user will have to buy a product (a rogue anti-virus program) to remove them.

Facebook users are urged to avoid installing anything that requires clicking on video links relating to Christmas.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 9:57 am and is filed under Cybersecurity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.