New Phishing Scam Spotted on Facebook

Security researchers from F-Secure warn of a phishing scam targeting Facebook users and propagating through chat messages and wall posts.

The phishing URLs advertised are of the form http://apps.facebook.com/[name] and trick the recipients into thinking they are being sent to a Facebook app.

Instead they will immediately be redirected to an external site mimicking the Facebook login page and suggesting that they need to re-authenticate.

This phishing attack uses multiple fake app pages created automatically by the scam's authors and the compromised accounts are abused to propagate the messages.

Facebook chat-powered phishing scams are nothing new, but history has shown that they can be incredibly effective, despite their relative low complexity.

An analysis of a very similar campaign done by Kaspersky Lab security researchers in October, revealed that accounts were being stolen at a rate of 150 per minute.

Facebook's security team works hard to suspend the fake pages, but they don't always manage to keep up with the rate at which attackers create new ones.

According research from Trusteer, the first hour of a phishing attack is the most critical time. The security vendor concluded that half of phishing victims expose their credentials during the first 60 minutes.

Users are advised to always double-check the URL in the address bar before logging into any website, not just Facebook.

Many login pages have HTTPS enabled, so the presence of secure elements could serve as indication of the page's authenticity.

Facebook users can also enable an account security option to have an email sent to them each time a new computer or device logs into their account.

Receiving such a notification when logged in from an already trusted device, can serve as a good indication that their account credentials might have been stolen.