Fake Facebook friend request email leads to malware

Facebook users are once again being targeted with fake emails purportedly coming from the social network, alerting them to a friend request.

A click on the offered “Confirm Friend Request” button directs the recipient to a fake Facebook page saying that his version of Macromedia Flash Player is too old to continue, and offering a link for downloading the latest version of the player, warns Trend Micro.

Predictably, the offered file is a piece of malware – a Zbot variant, to be exact. And if the recipient fails to realize that the idea of needing the latest version of the Flash Player to accept a Facebook friend request or viewing the site is quite absurd, he will end up with the information stealing Trojan on his system.

What differentiates this particular version of the popular malware from previous ones is the fact that the URL it visits to download the configuration files with URLs to monitor isn’t hard-coded into the malware. Instead, it calculates the URL it will visit by taking into account the data indicated by the affected system.