Facebook Continues to Battle Rogue Phishing Applications

Attackers continue to target Facebook through rogue phishing applications to steal personal information that could lead to further attacks against unsuspecting computer users.

On Thursday, Facebook had stated it had disabled a total of six rogue applications that were attempting to steal Facebook user login credentials and spamming people. Unfortunately, mere hours later, more of these phishing applications appeared.

Five more, in fact, and according to Rik Ferguson, a researcher for Trend Micro, they have been identified under such names as "Matching", "Pok", "Friends", "Friends Gifts" and "Your Photos". By Thursday evening, these had been terminated as well. A spokeswoman for the social networking website stated that Facebook "will continue to ensure that all applications on Facebook Platform comply with Facebook policies."

Ferguson, who had discovered six rogue applications earlier in the week, posted on his blog that, "The new rogue apps take the same format as previously but use different application icons, have slightly more credible notifications to your friends and also now feature bogus notifications to the profile owner, presumably in an effort to persuade the victim to install further apps and maximize the fraudsters' advertising returns."

It seems that while these applications were active, users had been receiving notifications that someone, typically a friend, had commented on one of their posts. These notifications were accompanied by links that redirects the victim to a phishing website where users are prompted to provide their login details, and then download the rogue application.

Following any of the directions contained in these notifications not only allows hackers to gain access to user Facebook accounts and their personal information, but in downloading these rogue applications, a victim's friends are also spammed with these same messages, spreading the problem.

So please, while surfing Facebook, or any social networking media for that matter, be careful of what links you click on, and who to trust. Go over your privacy settings and remove any applications that you no longer use.