Q & A
Social Network Diseases
By J. D. BIERSDORFER
Published: December 10, 2008
Q. Can you get a computer virus from Facebook?
A. Social networking sites are not immune to malicious software attacks, so picking up a virus is a possibility, especially if you are using Windows. For example, variations of the virus called Koobface have been plaguing Facebook and MySpace since August.
A common ploy for the virus is to send messages from a compromised account to all the people on the person?s Friends list, inviting them to click on a link for a video. (As with regular e-mail, suspicious links ? even from friends ? should be avoided.)
The link leads to a Web page that appears to show a video. The page then downloads the virus file to the computer, using an innocuous file name like ?Flash update.? (Flash, the multimedia software by Adobe, is used on many video-sharing sites like YouTube.)
The virus often includes a program to steal passwords or join the infected machine to a botnet ? a vast network of compromised computers intended to pump out spam and viruses around the Internet without their owners? knowledge.
Once a computer is infected, the virus can spread throughout another friend?s list of friends to get more victims. McAfee Security has an illustrated description of the Koobface virus on its site at snipurl.com/75hgq. Symantec, another antivirus software maker, has information on its site as well, at snipurl.com/75hzl.
Most up-to-date antivirus programs should be able to fend off Koobface and similar threats. Some companies are selling software specifically to protect against botnets, like Symantec?s $30 Norton AntiBot program for Windows (symantec.com/norton/antibot). Trend Micro, another security company, offers a free beta version of its bot-spotting PC utility called RUBotted at snipurl.com/75jc2.
