Password Reset Email is New Facebook Virus

Security researchers uncover spoof email with downloadable files that include the Trojan virus Bredolab.

October 28, 2009, 09:41 AM —  CSO — 

Security firm MX Lab said in a blog post Tuesday it has detected a new Bredolab variant masking itself as the "Facebook Password Reset Confirmation." According to MX Lab, the From address in the email is shown as "The Facebook Team ", but this address is spoofed.

The attachment has the name Facebook_Password_4cf91.zip and includes the file Facebook_Password_4cf91.exe. The part between _ and .zip at the end is choosen randomly and contains letters and numbers. The trojan is known as Trojan.Downloader.Bredolab.AZ (BitDefender), Bredolab.gen.a (McAfee) or W32/Obfuscated.D2!genr (Norman) and is only detected by 14 of the 41 AV engines at Virus Total, MX Lab researchers said.

Read about other Facebook schemes in: Five Facebook, Twitter Scams to Avoid and 5 More Facebook, Twitter Scams to Avoid

The body of the email is as follows: Hey vguysville , Because of the measures taken to provide safety to our clients, your password has been changed. You can find your new password in attached document. Thanks, The Facebook Team

According to MX Labs, Bredolab is a trojan horse that downloads and executes files from the Internet, such as rogue anti-spyware. To bypass firewalls, it injects its own code into legitimate processes svchost.exe and explorer.exe. Bredolab contains anti-sandbox code (the trojan might quit itself when an external program investigates its actions). A post about the scam is also included on Facebook's security information page.

CSO

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