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Phantom app risk used to bait scareware trap

The non-threat with no name

Scareware scammers are staking advantage of rumours about an "unnamed app" that supposedly poses a security risk to Facebook users in order to trick users into sites slinging rogue security software packages.

Searching on Google for the term "Facebook unnamed app" leads to numerous hacker-poisoned search engine results prepared for the scam, which redirect to malware distribution portals. A blog posting by Rik Ferguson of Trend Micro explains that the Facebook unnamed app security threat is just a rumour, but the threat of searching for the term is all too real.

Ferguson reckons the jury is out on whether scareware scammers created the rumour on Facebook in the first place or just latched onto it for their own benefit.

David Harley, director of malware intelligence at security firm Eset, suggests the "Unnamed App" rumour "is likely to refer to the 'Boxes' tab, which can be found on some Facebook profile pages", at least according to a discussion thread on Facebook (here).

More on the LivePcCare promoted via the scam can be found in a blog post by Panda Security here.

The latest security flap follows the pattern of an earlier September 2009 scare story about an application called Fan Check, that was also use to bait fake anti-virus traps for anyone who cared to search for more information. ®

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