Experts fear rise in Facebook hackings

COMPUTER experts last night called for Facebook to review its security processes after the social networking website was hit by hackers five times in a week.

Four separate “rogue applications” and a virus targeted users of the site, according to security firm Trend Micro.

Although there is no evidence that people’s personal details were stolen by the cybercriminals, experts fear that could be the next step.

The problem lies in the fact Facebook allows people to create software to run on the site, but those applications do not need to be approved first.

Rik Ferguson, senior security adviser at Trend Micro, said: “I think that it is time Facebook had a review of its application-vetting policy. It launched a service in November last year where people can pay to get their applications approved, but it is voluntary.”

According to Ferguson, the rogue applications which were active last week — Error Check System, Facebook Closing Down, Bigger Than MySpace and Closing Down — sent messages to users’ profiles saying, for example, that a friend had reported a violation or had a problem contacting them. Once the user clicked on the message or link, it was forwarded to everyone in their address book. It also gave hackers the opportunity to steal personal information contained in the profile.

The programmes appeared to be test runs, with the next stage potentially proving more dangerous.

Ferguson said: “It looks like this is a proof of concept. They did not appear to do anything malicious other than spread themselves extremely fast and well.

“Now they have worked out how to do it, we would expect to see more and more malicious applications.”

On Saturday, a variant of the Koobface virus that first appeared on social networking sites last December added to Facebook’s problems. By getting users to visit a fake YouTube page, hi-tech criminals then install malicious software onto the computer.

Ferguson advised care about the information made available on Facebook. Profiles should be set to private and not contain details beyond what is necessary.

No one from Facebook was available to comment.