14 DAY TRIAL // It turns out that not only the walls of Facebook members are at risk of becoming flooded with spam messages, as now the site’s Help Center Community Forum witnessed a massive attack from spammers that promote their malicious campaign by posting fake movie and sports events streaming offers.
Facebookprivacyandsecurity reports that in less than a minute a new spam message pops up, each of them advertising rugby matches, football and movies from around the world, fact which points out that the posts are addressed to Facebook members worldwide.
Spambots that post from fake or overtaken profiles are the number one suspects in this case, especially if we consider the large number of alerts and the short intervals they are published at.
Every link promises to lead to legitimate streaming site where free live footage can be seen, but in fact, they all point to malware filled locations that wait for unsuspecting users to come by and serve them viruses and other malicious elements.
Facebook doesn’t permanently monitor the Help Center and that’s probably why the cyber villains though it would be a great opportunity for them to launch such a campaign.
“With approximately 800 million users on Facebook, spammers will continue to seek out holes in the site's armour and try to trick the unwary into clicking on their links. To have the best chance of success, Facebook needs 24 x 7 protection, every single day of the year, and to raise awareness of the risks amongst its userbase,” said Graham Cluley in regards to the situation.
Until the social network designates someone to overlook this section of their website, or until they implement some automated mechanism that prevents such incidents, users are advised to ignore the phony offers.
As in many cases before, crooks will rely on the fact that users tend to trust more content posted on official sections of a website.