Ramnit Goes Loose Again, This Time Targets Facebook

The Ramnit worm is at it again and this time around it's not going for a bank but the popular social-networking site Facebook. Security company Seculert has posted on its blog revealing that Ramnit has stolen 45,000 Facebook login accounts, a majority of these situated in UK and France. The security firm has been tracking Ramnit and discovered the stolen Facebook cache in its Seculert labs. Ramnit was first recognized as a virus in 2010. It is reported that Ramnit has grown since and is using Facebook as a platform to spread.
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Ramnit is three-component malware capable of infecting Windows executable files, Microsoft Office and HTML files. It uses HTML files as a platfrom to replicate itself, according to Microsoft and McAfee's findings. The worm was initially a tool for carrying out financial fraud. The sudden shift to a social platform has perplexed many. "We suspect that the attackers behind Ramnit are using the stolen credentials to log into victims' Facebook accounts and to transmit malicious links to their friends, thereby magnifying the malware's spread even further," Seculert said.

Cybercriminals have also exploited the fact that users tend to use the same password for various web-based services. With Facebook linking to a vast number of websites, it makes it a far more serious hazard than just a social network breach. Though Facebook said it detected no evidence of Ramnit spreading via its site, it is important for users to keep a check on their Facebook accounts if they are using it as a multi-purpose account.

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