House of Eratosthenes

Just a shout-out to all these folks who have (knowingly or not) thrown these invitations my way to do this-or-that on FaceBook. And a warning, I guess…albeit, not a very informed one, and I fully intend to keep it that way.

I just went through a malware adventure at the beginning of the year. What was plaguing me, I found out, was — for that instant — virtually unsolvable. It’s an arms race; from time to time, it’s gonna be that way and the bad guys are going to be winning. My victory announcement was premature. And what’s even worse, the beastie was engaging all kinds of impressive features to dodge countermeasures and hide itself. I don’t really know with any confidence when & where I picked up the damn thing.

I ended up formatting. Go scorched earth. By the time it came to that, the problem had morphed into an obsession. Think of Richard Dreyfuss building a big clay replica of Devil’s Tower. Hey, I’m a computer dude. Have been my whole life. I spent a lot of years being a computer security dude. It was my first experience running into something in the malware world “unsolvable.” Ultimately I had to come to terms with the fact that the world is generally becoming a more complicated place.

And in complication, chaos wins out over order.

And then Hector Owen steps forward with his report about receiving Koobface spam through the e-mails:

It’s the Koobface worm, it says here: Koobface Re-Activated! and here, and here, and here, and other places, no doubt.

In my case it was an email that seemed to be from Facebook announcing that a friend had sent a message, but the style was unfamiliar, which should have been the tip-off.

Subject: Firstname Lastname sent you a message on Facebook …

Firstname sent you a message.

——————–
(no subject)

youtube
poison url goes here

(The url is disguised by having www.facebook.com at the beginning, but in my case at least continued to bit.ly as the real destination, which, of course, was not the real destination.)

That’s it. There is usually quite a bit more stuff in one of these message notifications. When I took a look at Facebook, I saw the message in my inbox, but by that time, I knew not to click it.

You can find out more about Koobface over here. If you’re a Facebook apps fan, I strongly suggest you read up.

And I then see see — speaking of Facebook apps — bullshit like this…

From the beginning, the profitability and viability of popular Facebook social networking games Mafia Wars and Farmville were predicated on the backs of scams, boasts Zynga CEO Mark Pincus in this video. “I did every horrible thing in the book just to get revenues,” he crows in the clip to a gathered bunch of fellow scumbag app developers.

In games like Mafia Wars, Farmville, YoVille and Vampires Live, you know, some of the major sources of all those garbage announcements cluttering up your Facebook, players compete to complete missions and level up. By leveling up, you can complete more difficult missions and fight off weaker opponents. You can wait for your various energies to regenerate naturally over time, or you can purchase with real money in-game boosts. Or, you can complete various lead generation offers, many of which are of the “answer page after page of questions and opt in and out of receiving various kinds of spam” variety. Some of them install malware and adware that is impossible to remove. And some of them secretly subscribe you to monthly recurring $9.99 credit card charges.

Video contains (like my own scribblings) some language that is not safe for a work environment or a mixed audience:

Bottom line?

I’m going to go ahead and remain anti-social on these social networking sites. No, I’m not clicking on your link. Nothing personal.

I went through 4 antimalware programs run from a BartPE CD, and followed it up with BitDefender’s free version, LinuxDefender. And I still couldn’t clean my malware off. I just reloaded a clean image from three months ago. After checking everything again, I’ll create a new Ghost image, just in case. It’s a lot less painful than reformatting.

Malwarebytes Antimalware, Spybot S&D, Superantispye, IObit360 and Linux Defender. None of them could rid me of that nasty rootkit. I’m ready to kneecap one of those spyware bastards if I ever meet one.
- Physics Geek | 01/31/2010 @ 15:27
On facebook I hide all popular applications, I don’t really accept “gifts” (I mean, come on… it’s a bunch of bits on a computer, not a “gift”. This takes “it’s the thought that counts” to the extreme.) I keep up with family and friends and post pictures. That’s pretty much it.

Games? I don’t even play real computer games, and I’ve never even been the slightest bit curious about “Farmville” or “Mafia Wars”.

I’m probably not going to join your cause or group just because you invited me to. I hit the “ignore” button a lot.

It’s nothing personal, really. It’s just not what I use facebook for.
- philmon | 01/31/2010 @ 16:27
Dang.

I’ve got a five-year-old account on FB, from the days when it was a toy for college-age-kids to keep in touch with each other from the computer labs.

I found the privacy settings, and jacked them up pretty high. Then I disallowed any “outside” FB plugins that wanted access to my personal data, and did a few other things to secure my FB-almost-non-use…

I would still worry about viruses if I weren’t running Linux.

I agree, Virus-writing is evil.

I suspect that it long ago passed away from script-kiddies and bored hackers into the hands of hackers employed by organized-crime-types…
- karrde | 01/31/2010 @ 16:35
I don’t know how to use Facebook. Or twitter. Yes, I know I’m completely retarded that way. I accept invitations from known friends but have no clue what I’m supposed to do in those forums, so I don’t do anything. Can’t you just email me if you have something to say that you would prefer go unrecorded on my blog?

I have to hire people to come clean out my computers when they get infected, do you know how expensive that gets? I’m passing on the whole facebook thing, despite the allure of that farm game thing.
- Daphne | 01/31/2010 @ 17:07
I run Linux and Windows apps inside of Virtualbox when I can. Not surprisingly, my wife is resistant to make the change.

For the record, Linux isn’t immune to viruses, although it’s more susceptible to worms. There are Linux rootkits out there and if Linux ever garnered more of the market share, we’d see a lot more of them.
- Physics Geek | 01/31/2010 @ 18:19
Thanks for the link and for the info on apps. I’ve been suspicious enough of those things that I never have run one of them. Think I’ll keep on that way.
- Hector Owen | 02/01/2010 @ 22:31
[…] look — as if I needed one, another reason not to join Facebook. Call me the last holdout if you like, but I’m an antisocial misanthrope (as opposed to the […]
- Spleenville - Faceblocked | 02/04/2010 @ 22:53

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KoobfaceSunday, January 31st, 2010

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Sunday, January 31st, 2010