An International computer security firm has discovered that popular social news site Digg is being exploited by cybercriminals.
According to PandaLabs, crooks are posing as Digg users and focusing on the site’s celebrity news forums. By all outward appearances, the fake accounts appear legitimate and this is what causes people to click the links that are posted using the fake accounts. Under the auspices of viewing celebrity sex tapes and the like, unwitting users click the link and then are prompted to download and install software in order to view the tawdry video clips. Of course, instead of getting any software to view video the user instead gets a fake diagnostic program.
The fake diagnostic program in turn pretends to scan the user’s hard drive for supposed malware (oh, the irony), finds the “infected” files and offers up a digital solution for a price (it would be something if the program actually uninstalled itself after payment was affected, but this seems unlikely).
Scamming people with a fake Norton-type security scan is one thing, but the real insidiousness of this malware lies in the fact that it hinders the computer’s normal functioning to make the diagnostic more convincing. No word yet on how many people thought they were going to see Paris Hilton’s latest hijinks only to find their CPU underperforming and a “helpful” little program offering to fix the problem.
Digg has already begun identifying and shutting down the fake profiles. “We are fully aware of the issue at hand and have already taken action,” Jen Burton, Digg’s community manager, said. “Malware accounts reported to us by the community are terminated immediately and all content is removed.” According to Burton, Digg has erased more than 300 suspected malware-spreading accounts.
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