Adding to the recent spate of malware showing up on Facebook, a new "court jester" Trojan horse has made its presence felt, according to IT security company, Sophos.
According to Sophos' latest alert, the Trojan horse Troj/Dloadr-BPL has propagated itself through innocent-looking messages on Facebook users' walls, urging people to click on a link to view a video. The link leads to a prompt to download an executable file, which downloads further malicious code upon being executed, detected as Troj/Agent-HJX.
Once the final piece of malicious code has installed itself, an image of a court jester sticking his tongue out is displayed.
 The image of the "court jester" that is displayed after the Trojan is installed.
Image courtesy of Sophos |
The spread of the malware is largely controllable with user awareness, said Sophos.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said: "People have got to learn that clicking on links in messages can lead to a malware infection, whether the messages are in your e-mail or on a site like Facebook.
"There has been a flurry of malicious e-mail messages recently posing as links to videos, so there's really no excuse not to know that this trick is being commonly used by hackers at the moment."
Cluley added that the increasing number of threats on the popular social networking site could lead companies to reconsider blocking Facebook at the workplace.
In addition to creating policies governing Facebook usage, businesses must update their virus software and beef up Web security frameworks, he added.
Facebook's malware troubles have been a turn off for developers, too. Privacy issues and the spread of viruses through the site have led to a marked decline in the use of Facebook's developer platform, according to reports.
Facebook's security chief, Max Kelly, admitted recently attacks on the site have been increasing. Speaking at a conference in April, he pinpointed January as the month the threats became noticeable, and added that ID theft has been rampant: "We are definitely a target for spammers. Data harvesting has become an issue for us."
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