According to unified threat management specialist Fortinet Facebook users had better start paying attention to the postings that appear on their message wall within the popular social networking site. It appears that spammers are moving away from targeting third party applications, as evidenced in the recent 'Secret Crush' case, and are instead turning their attentions to posting deceptive message containing links to spam sites on the wall instead.
Fortinet warns that by using genuine profiles to distribute these messages, spammers are able to overcome the trust issues that exist when renting or buying identities from underworld types. The full advisory can be found at the Fortiguard Center.
Fortinet has also published the findings of its March malware report, and this makes the usual somber reading it has to be said. It reveals that Sunday has become a spike day for malware activity, with four consecutive Sundays seeing an increase in activity that has pushed the Pushdo.EV Trojan to the top of the malware tree with 13.5 percent of all activity for the month. It achieved this by sending out animated e-cards that promised recipients pictures of naked ladies.
"Activities in the last month showed the strength of the Pushdo botnet, which is a clear indicator that the socially-engineered mass e-card approach continues to gain traction," said Derek Manky, security research engineer for Fortinet. "Consumers should be reminded that legitimate e-cards are not generally sent as attachments, but rather as links to a hosting Web site. And as a rule of thumb, we should all avoid opening attachments from unsolicited emails."