Facebook : A classic malicious spam campaign

Facebook users are the target of a spam campaign which is being sent around email services.

The social network can this time be accused of being a little lackadaisical. A spam campaign picked up on by McAfee Labs is currently doing the rounds, targeting the 400 million Facebook users, with the message being distributed via standard email services. This malicious spam has the aim of tricking gullible users.

Users are informed in the message that their password has been reinitialised for… security reasons. The message then requests that users open the attached file containing their new password, although in reality the attachment contains malware. According to McAfee Labs, who haven’t released a lot of information on this subject, this appears to be the work of a password thief who then tries to use all password combinations with user names input into the computer.

The message is written in poor English, although this may confuse users who aren’t native speakers, with the distribution being on a large scale, not just in the United States, but also in Europe, Australia and Asia.

Of course, the reality is that Facebook would never send such a message. At a minimum, Facebook may send an email with a link requesting the user to reinitialise their password, but certainly not to use a password contained in an attachment.

At the beginning of the year, McAfee signed a partnership agreement with Facebook.