November 2009 Archives

Ever wondered exactly how people who enjoy putting malicious files into the wide blue yonder ensure their bundles of joy are as attractive as possible to those who would happily download them?

Well, I came across this program today and thought it was worth looking into. It dips into what's hot and current in the world of free downloads then uses that to ensnare as many potential victims as possible.

How do they do it?

"Block Checkers" are those wonderful scam sites that claim to be able to show you who has you down as "blocked" on your favourite IM application. They've been around for a while, but always take the form of a website that you enter your details on. Once you've entered your login, you can expect to see your IM account sending lots of spam for viagra (along with adverts for the block checker site you used) to all of your contacts.

It's a rather spectacular way to lose all your friends on Instant Messaging (and quickly answers the question of "Who is blocking you". Answer: everybody).

Well, some wily individual has taken inspiration from the static webpages and come up with a Block Checker in the form of an executable file. However, this one has somewhat more sinister intentions than spamming links to a useless block check website with the occasional advert for a genuine rolex watch.

Shall we take a look?

You might want to keep an eye on your honesty levels over the next few weeks where Facebook is concerned - sometimes trying to find out more than you're entitled to will bite you on the backside as we're about to see.

You may or may not be familiar with the "Honesty Box" application on Facebook - like similar features on Myspace etc, it allows people to leave entirely anonymous messages on your Facebook page to the tune of "I love you" or "You're a big stinky head" leading to hours of fun for all the family.

It seems a group of individuals are spamming a fake program to the walls of unsuspecting Facebook users, promising to "reveal all" with regards who called them an idiot at 2 in the morning:



The program claims it will strip out the hidden data from your honesty box, then convert it into a name so you know who left the message. Of course, it's all nonsense; the program is bound with a random Keylogger / Trojan / Virus of the attackers choosing, which means your day could take a very random and unfortunate turn depending on what they have in store for you.


 This could be a perfect setup for scammers to phish accounts, then use those compromised accounts to spam the application onto more Facebook walls where new victims can be attacted by the lure of "really secret stuff".

Avoid!

Not so long ago, I wrote about "Google are hiring" spammers on Twitter, and how they were apparently using "Twitter like" bird images as their avatar - one would think to make themselves look a little more "official" than someone with a "buy stuff now" image which would be a clear clue to a spammer.

I said "There's a lot of these profiles around at the moment - ignore / block the lot of them and hope Twitter gets a grip on this fresh wave of spammers..."

At the time, I thought it was obvious that I was refering to blocking them based on their message content (as opposed the images they used, however funky or generic they may be) but it seems I should have been clearer and now someone is a little grumpy about it.

It was later pointed out that the images were the new default images for Twitter profiles without an avatar - due to an error with the comments moderation, the two comments posted to that (along with a bunch of others) were lost to the void and only recently reclaimed.

No problem, article updated.

However, there's this blog entry still to address (written six days after a comment was made from a poster whose submission went AWOL) and I don't think she's very happy with me:

"I have friends with these new bird avatars and I can attest to the fact that they are not spammers. They do not deserve to be blocked and treated as if they are. They have done nothing wrong."

The image change was something I noted about the spam accounts; however, I thought the rather large clue as to who to block was in the screenshot and article title: namely, accounts spamming "Google are hiring".



After all, why would you block a friend if they weren't physically sending "Google are hiring" spam given that was what the spam accounts were sending? It seems faintly ludicrous to think someone would mentally disassociate the content from the ultimate decision to block communications based purely on me mentioning the image changes, but there you go. I'll try to be clearer next time, and I guess I'll place the award on the mantelpiece...