Saturday, January 7, 2012

Majority of Facebook Logins Stolen by Ramnit Worm Invalid or Expired

Facebook logoEarlier this week we wrote about the latest variant of the pesky Ramnit worm that is wriggling its way into victim’s machines in order to lift sensitive data including Facebook login credentials.

A reported 45,000 Facebook usernames and passwords had been stolen by the malware, but Facebook officials say that “more than half of those logins were either invalid or had old/expired passwords.”

To add insult to injury for the cybercrooks behind Ramnit, a good number of the lifted logins were for fake or junk accounts anyway.

While there’s no telling how many of the compromised logins were actually valuable for the malware authors, it’s more than likely that they did manage to obtain thousands of logins that they may find useful.

The good news is that Facebook hasn’t come across any evidence of the worm spreading on the social networking site and they’re working with their partners in order to help users protect themselves and their machines. They’ve also put measures in place to help users restore any compromised accounts.

Still, Facebook warns users not to click suspicious links and to report any sketchy material that they encounter. Social networking aside, users should always keep their operating system current and run up-to-date antivirus software.

Good job, Facebook team!

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