Re: facebook worm

[Gadi Evron <ge () linuxbox org>]

[top-posting]

Now that this worm has been somewhat balked, I'd like to thank the 
membership for your patience with this off-topic post. I realize it is 
probably as annoying to some as it was useful to others.

My thinking was that on the rare occasion when we can anticipate 
*possible* and *serious* floods and bottle-necks at ISP tech-support 
lines, across multiple providers and regions, we should share that 
information. NANOG remains the best place for such information 
sharing.

While I realize this mailing list is mostly about network operations and 
less about ISP operations, we had a discussion in the past where we have 
seen some in our community do use this information effectively and find 
it useful.

This is a rare occasion indeed, but an explanation and an apology were in 
order.

Thank you,

        Gadi.


On Wed, 6 Aug 2008, Gadi Evron wrote:
> Hi all. You may want to be ready for a *possible* support lines flood today.
>
> Yesterday I discovered a fast-spreading facebook worm. It spreads by sending 
> messages to all your facebook friends, from your account, asking them to 
> click on a link in the .pl ccTLD.
>
> This worm is somewhat similar to zlob, here is a link to a kaspersky paper on 
> a previous iteration of it, they call it koobface:
> http://www.kaspersky.com/news?id=207575670
>
> The worm collects spam subject lines from, and then sends the users personal 
> data to the following C&C:
> zzzping.com
>
> I spoke with DirectNIC last night and the Registrar Operations (reg-ops) 
> mailing list was updated that the domain is no longer reachable. That was 
> very fast response time from DirectNIC, which we appreciate.
>
> The worm is still fast-spreading, watch the statistics as they fly:
> http://www.d9.pl/system/stats.php
>
> The facebook security team is working on this, and they are quite capable. 
> The security operations community has been doing analysis and take-downs, but 
> the worm seems to still be spreading.
>
> All anti virus vendors have been notified, and detection (if not removal) 
> should be added within a few hours to a few days.
>
> For now, while users may get infected, their information is safe (unless the 
> worm has a secondary contact C&C which I have not verified yet).
>
> It seems like some users may have learned not to click on links in email, but 
> any other medium does not compute.
>
>         Gadi.