Facebook users beware of account-hijacking with Chrome extensions
March 29, 2012 by Network Security
Filed under Network security
It cannot be ignored that both Google Chrome and Facebook have grown a lot in terms of popularity and this is why cyber crooks have targeted users of them both.
Engineer Fabio Assolini from Kaspersky Lab said that Facebook users are all the time under the fire of “new features” like the changing of the profile color, removing social viruses or the possibility to see who view their profile.
In order to do all the above, users have to take some steps that include the installation of a fake Adobe Flash Player Chrome extension.
Although this is not some new technique it is the first time the malicious extensions got hosted on the official web store of Google Chrome.
This extension lets cyber criminals receive full control over the target’s profile and thus allows them to deliver junk and spam messages or invite others to install the same malicious extension. After that the access to this profiles can be sold to companies to promote their products and services on Facebook.
“We reported this malicious extension to Google and they removed it quickly,” said the expert. “But we noted the bad guys behind this malicious scheme are uploading new extensions regularly, in a cat and mouse game.”
