Malware steals Facebook passwords

45,000 passwords get stolen from Facebook by a computer worm, say security experts.


Security firm Seculert believes the data has largely been stolen from Facebook accounts in the UK and France by a well-known worm Ramnit, also responsible for stealing banking credentials previously.


The BBC reports:
"Social networks offer rich pickings for hackers because of the huge amount of personal data that is stored on them. Increasingly malware is being updated for the social networking age.

"It appears that sophisticated hackers are now experimenting with replacing the old-school email worms with more up-to-date social network worms. As demonstrated by the 45,000 compromised Facebook subscribers, the viral power of social networks can be manipulated to cause considerable damage to individuals and institutions when it is in the wrong hands," said Seculert.

According to Seculert, 800,000 machines were infected with Ramnit from September to the end of December 2011.

Microsoft's Malware Protection Center (MMPC) described Ramnit as "a multi-component malware family which infects Windows executable as well as HTML files... stealing sensitive information such as stored FTP credentials and browser cookies".

In July 2011 a Symantec report estimated that Ramnit worm variants accounted for 17.3% of all new malicious software infections.

For Facebook users concerned that they have been affected by the worm, the advice is to run anti-virus software.

"It won't necessarily be obvious that you have been attacked. The worm is stealing passwords so it is not going to announce itself," said Graham Cluley, senior security consultant at Sophos."