Malware and scam attacks on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and even Android Market seem to be common these days. Many such incidents have come to the forefront in the last few months, and the problem seem rising every day. This proves that how malware writers focus on the web as their primary target, and it has shown the vulnerability of social networking sites as well. This is the reason why sites like Twitter and Facebook have taken steps to enhance their security from explicit links and pop-ups.

Worst malware attacks on social networking sites

The list of malware attacks of social networks is growing longer, and some of the frequent and worst attacks include:

• Pornspace: This malware attack took benefit of a flaw in the security mailing list of MySpace and it released password-stealing worm into the profiles, which hijacked the profiles and also send porn-based spam for increasing traffic to porn sites.
• My Webcam thingy: the name seems strange, but this malware attacked over seven hundred Twitter accounts and it tweeted the followers to check out a webcam performance of a female, and it led the viewers to a portal, which stole passwords and credit card details.
• Fire Foxed: this malware attacked when users used Mozilla Firefox for accessing their profiles. The browser was affected by a click-jacking intrusion, which redirected the users to porn sites, which activated a worm. Hackers got an access to passwords through this worm.

Bad SEO

This is another cause of malware attack on social networking sites, and in this kind of attacks the malware writer or the hacker attracts the users to a website, which consist of a malicious software program, and also lure the users to download fake antivirus, fake surveys, and Trojans as well. This sort of malware is also known as search engine poisoning, as hackers used SEO techniques for such attacks. These attacks also include clickjacking, cross-site scripting, identity theft, and bogus surveys.

Dislike scam on Facebook

This is another social networking malware scam, which affected Facebook. This came through Facebook updates, especially those from third-parties like Tweetdeck. Bogus status updates were the main source of such malware attacks. The list goes on with chain reaction malware, which offer free merchandise to users for participating in surveys as well as to share them to others on Facebook. Those who completed the surveys faced malware attack in return.

Over The Rainbow

The main features of this malware attack includes:

• Hackers embed some malicious JavaScript codes in Twitter messages that come with retweeting capability
• This malware activated pop-ups
• It redirected the users to various porn websites
• The malicious links also spread to other followers of the social networking site as well

Many users exploited the loophole of this malware for creating tweets, which contained color blocks. This is the reason why it was known as rainbow tweets. The messages also had the ability to hide the main content and lured the users to click on the malicious links.