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Stolen Facebook Names, Passwords Mostly Old Data
By John P. Mello Jr., PCWorld Jan 6, 2012 7:07 AM
The cyber bandits who nicked 45,000 Facebook user names and passwords with a computer worm Thursday got less than they bargained for.
A "majority" of the credentials stolen by the thieves were "out of date," according to a statement Facebook released to the media Friday. When pressed on the point by blogger Emile Protalinski, a Facebook spokesperson acknowledged that "more than half" of the purloined data contained invalid logins or old or expired passwords.
"Last week we received from external security researchers a set of user credentials that had been harvested by a piece of malware," Facebook explains in its statement. "Our security experts have reviewed the data, and while the majority of the information was out-of-date, we have initiated remedial steps for all affected users to ensure the security of their accounts."
Facebook says it is bolstering its antivirus protection and reminds users to "protect themselves by never clicking on strange links and reporting any suspicious activity they encounter on Facebook."
According to the Israeli security company Seculert, the Facebook credentials were stolen by the Ramnit worm. "We suspect that the attackers behind Ramnit are using the stolen credentials to log-in to victims' Facebook accounts and to transmit malicious links to their friends, thereby magnifying the malware's spread even further," Seculert says in a company blog.
Details at:
http://www.pcworld.c....html#tk.hp_new
By John P. Mello Jr., PCWorld Jan 6, 2012 7:07 AM
The cyber bandits who nicked 45,000 Facebook user names and passwords with a computer worm Thursday got less than they bargained for.
A "majority" of the credentials stolen by the thieves were "out of date," according to a statement Facebook released to the media Friday. When pressed on the point by blogger Emile Protalinski, a Facebook spokesperson acknowledged that "more than half" of the purloined data contained invalid logins or old or expired passwords.
"Last week we received from external security researchers a set of user credentials that had been harvested by a piece of malware," Facebook explains in its statement. "Our security experts have reviewed the data, and while the majority of the information was out-of-date, we have initiated remedial steps for all affected users to ensure the security of their accounts."
Facebook says it is bolstering its antivirus protection and reminds users to "protect themselves by never clicking on strange links and reporting any suspicious activity they encounter on Facebook."
According to the Israeli security company Seculert, the Facebook credentials were stolen by the Ramnit worm. "We suspect that the attackers behind Ramnit are using the stolen credentials to log-in to victims' Facebook accounts and to transmit malicious links to their friends, thereby magnifying the malware's spread even further," Seculert says in a company blog.
Details at:
http://www.pcworld.c....html#tk.hp_new
