Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

Facebook scammers redirect victims through Amazon's cloud

Facebook scammers use links to Amazon's S3 service in their campaigns to trick URL filters

Facebook scammers have started redirecting victims through Amazon's cloud in order to bypass malicious URL filters, according to security researchers from antivirus vendor F-Secure.

One Facebook survey scam recently analyzed by F-Secure uses malicious browser extensions to hijack Facebook accounts and post spam messages on their walls.

The messages contain Bit.ly shortened links that appear to lead to interesting videos. However, in reality they point to redirect scripts hosted on Amazon's S3 service that send victims to a fake Facebook page.

The rogue page displays a video player image, which when clicked, prompts a window asking users to participate in a survey. Scammers earn money through affiliate marketing schemes for every user who agrees to participate.

The scam is distributed through fake extensions for Google Chrome and Firefox that are passed to victims as YouTube player updates. Users are asked to download and install these in order to watch the videos they clicked on.

According to F-Secure's chief research officer, Mikko Hypponen, scammers prefer to redirect users through links on Amazon's cloud because its domain name and corresponding IP addresses have a high trust rating. This increases their chances of tricking malicious URL filters like those used by Bit.ly or Facebook.

While the use of Amazon S3 links in Facebook scams is a relatively new technique, the hosting of malware on the popular cloud service is not a new practice. The Amazon S3 hosting service is not very expensive and a lot of cybercriminals are probably able to afford it.

However, some of them prefer to steal login credentials from existing Amazon customers and abuse their accounts, Hypponen said. "Some of the malcreants exclusively use accounts belonging to other people. Others create new accounts with stolen credit cards. Some create valid accounts and pay for them."

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: Amazon, Facebook, F-Secure, Google
References show all

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: Facebook, f-secure, internet, Internet-based applications and services, scams, security, social networking
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Get the Whole Picture Why Most Organizations Miss User Response Monitoring—and What to Do About It
    You can be armed with vast amounts of performance metrics, but if you don’t know what users are actually experiencing, you don’t have the real performance picture. While this measure is critical, it is one many organizations fail to consistently capture. This guide looks at the challenges of user response monitoring, and it shows how you can overcome these challenges and start to get a real handle on your infrastructure performance and how it impacts your users’ experience.
    Learn more »
  • Enterprise Buyers Guide for Application Development Software
    New software delivery models, leaner and faster development methodologies, emerging mobile apps and the impact of open source are all key trends changing the way software will be procured in the future. To help organisations understand this changing landscape and to provide a framework for procurement Computerworld has created an enterprise buyers guide which includes the top technology trends in applications, programming, architectures and methodologies. It profiles the software vendors to watch, addresses the security concerns caused by Web 2.0 and examines the impact of Open Source Software (OSS).
    Learn more »
  • ALM Buyers Guide: A Practical Guide to Choosing the Right Agile Tools for your Team
    This buyer's guide describes the key criteria for application lifecycle management (ALM) solutions for today's high-performance teams. It includes key considerations for enhancing your single- or multi-vendor ALM environment.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.