Facebook plagued with security issues

PALO ALTO, Calif., March 2 (UPI) -- Internet security experts said U.S. Web site Facebook has been hit by five distinct security problems during the past seven days.

Rik Ferguson, senior security advisor for Trend Micro, said the social networking Web site based in Palo Alto, Calif., has been hit in the past week with four malicious applications and a new version of the Koobface virus that was first detected in December 2008, the BBC reported Monday.

Ferguson said the malicious applications attempt to steal information from Facebook profiles that can then be sold. He said one of the applications tricks users into installing it on their accounts by telling them friends are unable to view their profiles.

He said while the applications noticed thus far have been little more than a nuisance, their existence could herald more sophisticated malicious programs to come.

"It's almost as if the applications we have seen this week are a proof of concept," he said. "It would be much better for them to generate rogue applications that did not look like rogue applications."

The security expert said the Koobface virus uses messages on Facebook to lure users to a fake YouTube page that installs malware on their computers. The malware sifts through cookies on the hard drive and uses the retrieved information to log on to other social sites that had been accessed using the computer.