Warning out vs. new Facebook tag scam

Facebook users were warned over the weekend against a new tagging scam that can potentially redirect them to malicious websites.

Bitdefender security researcher Bogdan Botezatu said the tagging campaign ended up infecting at least 5,000 computer users with a backdoor in the fourth week of January.

In a blog post, he said prospective victims are shown a supposed video where a number of friends are tagged.

"Users who click the respective video are sent to an external page, where their user-agent (the browser and operating system identifiers) are analyzed so hackers know where to redirect the victim. After all, it wouldn’t make any sense to redirect an Android user to Windows malware, would it?" he said.

Yet, he said the video's URL indicates a goo.gl host, which should alert users as goo.gl is a URL shortening service and not a video hosting one.

Even so-called dumb mobile phones are not spared – the cybercriminals behind the scam will redirect the victim to an SMS fraud service that tries to hook the user to a useless premium service.

Windows users are redirected to a fake Facebook page where they are prompted to download a so-called Flash Player update to watch the video.

As in past scams, the Flash download is really malware – a backdoor that can be used to install other malicious components.

Botezatu advised users to have an antimalware solution on their PCs, and not click every single link they get on their Facebook wall. — Joel Locsin/LBG, GMA News