Malware Discovered On Facebook Masquerading As A YouTube Video

Let’s face it, whenever we see a sexy photo or video pop up on our Facebook News Feed, we get curious, especially if the title is extremely engaging, but it looks like there has been a piece of malware making its rounds on Facebook. According to an online security firm, Bitdefender, it seems that there have been certain posts popping up on Facebook which you can see in the screenshot above.

As you can see, the video looks pretty intriguing and most might click out of curiosity, but Bitdefender is warning users against doing that. Apparently it is a malware which they believe was developed in Albania and has been designed to look like a YouTube video. However when the link is clicked, it will lead them to websites that try to get them to install the malware under the pretense that it is an update for Adobe Flash.

According to Catalin Cosoi, Bitdefender’s chief security strategist, “Scammers have created over 20,000 unique URLs that redirect victims to malicious websites and a fake alluring YouTube video, showing a woman taking her clothes off on a webcam. The video seems to actually play for a couple of seconds to entice male users to click. Malware writers faked the number of views so the video seems to have been watched by over a million users.”

To make things worse, the hackers are using URL shorteners like bit.ly, so when highlighted it doesn’t display the full URL, meaning that users won’t be able to tell it does not actually lead to YouTube until it’s too late. So, the next time you see it pop up in your News Feed, you might want to keep scrolling.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Web
Tags: Facebook, Hacking, Malware, Security