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The new virus doing the rounds: Koobface
By siliconindia
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Thursday, 13 August 2009, 19:45 IST
Bangalore: A new virus, Koobface is doing the rounds in social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Hi5, Bebo and MySpace. The government's India Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has warned that the virus is spreading by sending spam containing a message with a link to a video to the users of these sites.
The message comes with an enticing tagline and spreads by spamming the contacts of the victim on networking sites. With Facebook alone having more than three million users in India, Koobface could immensely damage the company's computer systems.
The virus is particularly dangerous as it uses the infected machine to target other systems and distribute additional malware. It generates 'pay per click' advertising revenue and steals sensitive data, says CERT-In on its website. The link provided redirects the user to a website that mimics YouTube, but is called YuoTube. The site then asks the user to install an executable (.EXE) file to watch the video.
Internet users have been advised by the government agency to install and maintain updated anti-virus software in their computers as well as a desktop firewall.