AntiVirusConnection

Facebook’s 120 million users are being targeted by a virus dubbed “Koobface” that uses the social network’s messaging system to infect PCs, then tries to gather sensitive information such as credit-card numbers.

It is the latest attack by hackers increasingly looking to prey on users of social-networking sites.

“A few other viruses have tried to use Facebook in similar ways to propagate themselves,” Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said in an e-mail. He said a “very small percentage of users” had been affected by these viruses.

“It is on the rise, relative to other threats like e-mails,” said Craig Schmugar, a researcher with McAfee Inc.

Koobface spreads by sending notes to friends of someone whose PC has been infected. The messages, with subject headers like, “You look just awesome in this new movie,” direct recipients to a Web site where they are asked to download what it claims is an update of Adobe Systems Inc’s Flash player.

Contaminated sites
If they download the software, users end up with an infected computer, which then takes users to contaminated sites when they try to use search engines from Google, Yahoo, MSN and Live.com, according McAfee. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture between Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

McAfee warned in a blog entry on Wednesday that its researchers had discovered that Koobface was making the rounds on Facebook.

Facebook requires senders of messages within the network to be members and hides user data from people who do not have accounts, said Chris Boyd, a researcher with FaceTime Security Labs. Because of that, users tend to be far less suspicious of messages they receive in the network.

W32.Koobface Removal:

Step 1 : Use Windows File Search Tool to Find W32.Koobface.B Path

1. Go to Start > Search > All Files or Folders.
2. In the “All or part of the the file name” section, type in “W32.Koobface.B” file name(s).
3. To get better results, select “Look in: Local Hard Drives” or “Look in: My Computer” and then click “Search” button.
4. When Windows finishes your search, hover over the “In Folder” of “W32.Koobface.B”, highlight the file and copy/paste the path into the address bar. Save the file’s path on your clipboard because you’ll need the file path to delete W32.Koobface.B in the following manual removal steps.

Step 2 : Use Windows Task Manager to Remove W32.Koobface.B Processes

1. To open the Windows Task Manager, use the combination of CTRL+ALT+DEL or CTRL+SHIFT+ESC.
2. Click on the “Image Name” button to search for “W32.Koobface.B” process by name.
3. Select the “W32.Koobface.B” process and click on the “End Process” button to kill it.
4. Remove the “W32.Koobface.B” processes files:
5. C:\Windows\fbtre6.exe