Facebook Widget Installs Zango Spyware

BaCa writes "A malicious Facebook Widget actively spreading on the social networking site ultimately prompts users to install the infamous "Zango" adware/spyware. The tremendous success and lightning fast expansion of Facebook empowered the social networking giant with an impressive user base. Needless to say, in a digital world where web traffic equals money, such a user base attracts spammers, virus/spyware seeders, and other ethic-less online marketers like honey would attract flies."

Facebook evolved to fast

The evolution of facebook took place to fast for the security to catch up.

"like honey would attract flies"

There is something else that attracts flies which it more closely resembles...

Without exception...

All the apps are terrible. Asides from their 'myspacesqueness', they also release your entire profile & friends to an unknown entity. Facebooks TOS is bad enough, but atleast you have a sense of who your dropping all thoughts of ownership or privacy too.

'caring' - imageogram

Obligatory

...such a user base attracts spammers, virus/spyware seeders, and other ethic-less online marketers like honey would attract flies.

http://xkcd.com/357/ [xkcd.com]

Wouldn't install for me

I tried to run it from the Facebook link in my sandbox, it wouldn't take. Looks like admin privileges are a requirement. I guess it's not surprising people aren't following the basic security steps that (even) Microsoft recommends.

why are all facebook widgets so retarded?

Facebook widgets are the new "I know someone who likes you" note-passing. Apps like "superpoke", "vampire bite", and now "secret crush"?

Social networking sites are like second grade classrooms.

Re:why are all facebook widgets so retarded?

They let the highschoolers and world in.

The reason it's like a second grade class room is because majority of users are of that mentality now. Just look at most of the "groups" now. Maybe they existed and I didn't notice before but all my groups were rather sane, now they're "IF U JOIN THIS GRUP WORLD PEACE WILL START!"

I've been on facebook since the beginning. And every minor improvement seemed to rock. They added photos. I was able to share photos in one place with most of my friends. I could invite friends over to a party with out having to e-mail every one. Yes, sometimes in college you don't get the opportunity to SEE all your friends every day.

And then the flood gates opened. The Developer thread was flooded with "HEAY I LOVE FACEBOOK CAN U MKE IT SO MUSIC PLAYS LIKE MYSPACE." People would kindly remind them that the whole thread was FOR developers. People could make 3rd party apps and it seemed pretty good because all the 3rd party apps were external. Then came the day that they let those 3rd party apps on everyones website. Then it just went to hell.

Thankfully Grease Monkey and scripts like:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/11992 [userscripts.org]
This exist.

Which is why I maintain 2 accounts. My 'professional' account. Uses my work address. All my college friends and people I know well. You can't find it anywhere. You can't search for it by name. Even if you know me I have to add you. Then my "Hi I just met you at the bar and I'm going to add you" account. Basic info. Searchable. Etc.

Too late

Facebook have already blocked it, days ago...

Re:Too late

It's good the Facebook is blocking that app, but this points to a deeper problem with Facebook's implementation of third-party applications. This is just the beginning of Facebook being exploited by scammers.

Whoever injected that spyware application will no doubt create a new developer account, and upload some variant of "Secret Crush". Blocking a particular application or a particular developer account is a short-term solution. I can only guess that more and more people are going to exploit Facebook apps for adware, spyware, phishing, identity theft, etc. Facebook will then be playing yet another game of "Internet whack-a-mole" where they try to block applications based on signatures, block developers based on IP address, and so on (with usual countermeasures of automated code variation, proxies, etc.). As we've seen from spam, viruses, spyware, and phishing, such games reach a stalemate where a certain fraction of users are becoming victims at any given time (typically the less savvy users, I suppose).

Personally I think Facebook should do a better job making the risks of third-party applications clear. The little "confirm that you want this application" question has already become so routine for most users that it means nothing to them. Moreover, the tight integration of third-party apps into the Facebook environment, though visually pleasing, leads most users to believe that the applications are written by and endorsed by Facebook. In fact, the code runs on third-party servers and those third-parties have access to profile data once you accept the app. Most Facebook users are surprised when you tell them this. And it's not always easy to tell who actually wrote a given application.

I think we all saw this coming, and I'm surprised Facebook didn't put in more safeguards to curtail the use of the app framework for spamming, phishing, and social engineering.

The widget is "Secret Crush" (saving you a click)

Quick summary:

The widget in question (according to TFA) is "Secret Crush". The app asks you to complete several steps, including signing up 5 of your friends and installing a tray applet (containing the "infamous "Zango" adware/spyware") from Zango's site.

Re:The widget is "Secret Crush" (saving you a clic

According to "blog.zango.com" (found by a google search "facebook widget zango") the widget is now called "My Admirer".
Facebook is going to hell in a handbasket. They should never have opened to "anyone with an email address"; that's just asking for trouble. At least they're making money, right?

intended consequences

In the same way that MS created IE so that third parties could gain control of your computer to generate profits(think of pop ups that were not disabled until XP SP 2, a continuing lack of Flash blocking, even though images can be blocked) I wonder if facebook has somehow facilitated this spyware. Clearly, if facebook gets a cut of revenue generated by the spyware, this would result in some large coin.

Am I the only person left?

Am I the only person left who doesn't know what facebook is?

From reading the press it seems to be some sort of web site where you upload all your private stuff for other people to see. I've never seen it though.

Don't feel bad, I don't get it either.

If you aren't the last person, you're not by much.

I only went and checked it out a few weeks ago, after not being able to stand all the hype any longer.

I can't figure out what it's for. I've said as much here on Slasdot before, and was told that basically it's a mechanism to find/keep in touch with friends.

It's kind of like "classmates.com", except it's free.

I went and tried it out. First of all, they want you to use your real name. Like you noted, your "private stuff". Myself, I am seeking to /limit/ my online exposure, not enhance it, so of course I created a fake account.

Once you have an account, there is very little to actually /do/, that I can see. You are supposed to join "networks", but there weren't any that seemed interesting to me.

I don't have any long lost friends to look up, and the couple of names I did plug in didn't get any hits. All of the people currently in my life that I want to keep up with I currently keep up with by other means, like email, telephone, or face-to-face.

I still don't understand the appeal of these "myspace" and "facebook" social web sites. What they really look like to me is an html-based web page creation utility, that allows people to create a personal web page without having to pay a hosting fee.

Since most ISPs these days give you a 5MB or so space where you can make a little web page if you want, I don't know why people don't just use that, except I guess they don't know how to make web pages. So MySpace, Facebook, etc., are like mini web-page software wizards to help you make a web page. Since all the web pages are centralized on one "server", they are thus also easily searchable / linkable.

If I wanted a web page to post things about myself, I'd go register a domain and some web hosting services and make one. I guess Facebook and MySpace are for people who don't want to go to the trouble.

Re:Don't feel bad, I don't get it either.

I created a fake account... I don't have any long lost friends to look up, and the couple of names I did plug in didn't get any hits.

Hmmm... well, if you used a fake name, then maybe all your former friends did too. The site only works if people use their real names. Facebook is exactly that for most people - kind of like classmates.com and Friends Reunited. It enables the maintenance of casual friendships without having to write/phone explicitly.

If you think about it, this is how most casual friendships work - I don't specifially talk to John down the hall at work to catch up, I might bump into him in the coffee room, see he's got a new shirt, find out it was his birthday yesterday etc. etc.. Just seeing and bumping into someone lets you stay in touch without it being an effort. Social networking sites let you do this. Email works for people you really want to stay in touch with, and chat forums work for a bunch of people who want to discuss the same topic(s). On Facebook I can find out that Fred who I went to school with is into a particular band too, and if there's a couple of other guys from school 10 years ago maybe a group of us could go to a gig. Nothing serious, nothing important, but if you like to stay loosely in touch with a whole bunch of people then it works really well.

Re:Explicit maintenance of friendship...

If you are worthy enough of friendship than I will make the effort to maintain that friendship explicitly.

Well, what the poster before you was trying to say was that social networking sites attempt to lower the amount of effort. You mention an effort, but the idea is that in the glorious future as we develop these tools there will be virtually no effort required. Of course, nothing out there now has fully succeeded, but they are trying. Also, nobody cares about the nonsensical trivia that people enter into their profiles on these sites. It does, however, give that lady at the front desk at your work something to do when there's nobody moving through the lobby.

Let me give you an example of a "casual friend". You know that guy at the bar who tells you about his band, and it sounds cool, but you don't want to get his phone number or give out yours just so you can check out their next show. The solution here is he can just tell you what his bands myspace is, or facebook, or whatever, and you can get the info there. No need for feigned friendships when you find out his band sucks.

Tag issues

While the tag "shitattractsflies" is somewhat amusing when describing (as an aside, Facebook started exclusively on college campuses some 5 years ago, now), I think the more insightful tag would be "peopleattractshit".

Personal responsibility -- don't install untrusted

Don't voluntarily install untrusted executable files! Period! There is no vulnerability without the user thinking that they want what's inside.

Facebook has nothing to do with the existence of this vulnerability. In fact, the browser-based app model explicitly is nice because of the sandbox effect, where such apps are very limited in what they can touch on your local machine. But when you convince people to break out of that sandbox by installing a local app, you can certainly kiss your computer goodbye.

--
Our microcontroller kit. Your gcc compiler. Learn digital electronics. [nerdkits.com]

scoble

Well, at least Scoble is safe.

This could never happen here...

Needless to say, in a digital world where web traffic equals money, such a user base attracts spammers, virus/spyware seeders, and other ethic-less online marketers like honey would attract flies.

It's a good thing that these "spammers, virus/spyware seeders, and other ethic-less online marketers" would ever take advantage of of the /. user base!

Oh wait... [slashdot.org]

Yaz.

firefox extension + script for facebook users

People with Firefox can install the "stylish" extension (for controlling CSS), and, along with the "De-MySpacify" script, block all appearances of facebook apps in their browser. ( http://userstyles.org/styles/3681 [userstyles.org] ). It's about 15 lines long and incredibly helpful (not to mention aptly-named).

There's XSS-like vulnerabilities too

The Profile Hug [facebook.com] application embeds an iframe in its request notification that sometimes (but not always) redirects the user to an external site that then shows facebook in an iframe along with advertisements. Facebook has yet to do anything about this app (though I have notified them).

For those who don't know how Facebook works, basically when one person installs an app, the app will pester them to request their friends also install it. A friend of mine installed it, which sent me a request that appears on a very long list of other such requests I've ignored. When I view my requests page, there is now a (sometimes) malicious iframe that will hijack my browser window, even though I have not installed any app.

I'm on a Mac, so wasn't affected.. but..

It's worse than an app.. it's actually an ad. It may be an actual app. However, it advertises itself as a banner and says you have 11 messages waiting. Click it, and it says they delete so many messages a day, and you are down to 3. I figured out pretty quickly when they asked for my gender (which they should have already if they were really a Facebook app) that it was fake.. besides the fact, it used images.. but there was no border around the banner, and no word "Advertisement". Facebook needs to correct this.. at a minimum.. and make it clear when you are leaving the Facebook site. But seriously, for Windows users, don't install executables. You know those "install and run" dialog boxes.. say "No." --Sam

FUD alert

I'm afraid this is all rumour and innuendo according to Zango:

http://blog.zango.com/PermaLink,guid,94c0e12c-c69e-484f-81b8-b8b58953d71b.aspx [zango.com]
(summary: users are clearly told they are downloading something, so what's the problem?)

And try to keep up with the times, /. Don't you know: "Zango Advisory: As of this posting, the Zango security team has observed that the Secret Crush widget on Facebook is now called the "My Admirer" widget."

ethicless?

why is this bias being injected into submissions? 'online marketers' aren't necessarily 'ethic-less,' even if their ethical standpoints don't necessarily coincide with their own. i would guess they do share ethical ideas with everybody using slashdot, though. they certainly utilize facebook to spread their ideals, which is what a lot of facebook users do on a regular basis (and what every living, thinking, non-hermit person who has any effect on the world does, consciously or unconsciously). this idea that it's ok to use false proclamations simply because you're discussing a subject your general audience will likely have similar feelings toward is ludicrous. i think spyware and spam and things like that are stupid and annoying, but practicing the distribution of those things does not make a person anything other than distributors of those things. if they do not have ethics, then they do not have ethics, but that's another situation entirely (and i would guess everything we know about human psychology and evolution pretty much rules that possibility out anyway), and certainly not the end result of their actions. their actions are the end result of their ethics, certainly, so i guess by stating otherwise you are begging the question? my knowledge of that fallacy is pretty lame, though. i'm not really smart enough to understand it, or something (something probably being i haven't learned enough to understand it [i remember reading that people who don't think they can do things tend to not try hard enough to find out if they can, so i'm trying to break that habit {because obviously if i read it on the internet it's true}]). another issue i have is with that article terming this as 'social engineering.' how exactly is a completely scripted process using absolutely no human interaction social engineering? if i write a program to represent a prompt for a passkey that stores the inputted information into a flat file, and a user ignorantly inputs their log in credentials to it, am i socially engineering them into doing so? just because it's a social networking site doesn't mean everything done on it is social. i understand that it's written to appear to be social, but i wouldn't call a full grown bear dressed in a diaper a human baby. i wouldn't call smarterchild a human being or consider a converssation with it a social event. why is completing a scripted process social on any level? just because you are compelled into action by a perceived social obligation does not mean you are participating in a social activity. i still pee standing up.

Really?

Why limit your social life by posting as an ac?

Re:Ethic-less?

You must use facebook a lot.

Re:What is "Facebook"?

Think MySpace only it looks like a corporate website c.1999 instead of a Geocities page c.1996. Oh, and with pointless activities.

Re:Ethic-less?

'I guess "unetical" is too big a word for the average facebook user.'

Perhaps they would use the word "unethical" though.

Re:Ethic-less?

Or a slashdot poster.

Re:What is "Facebook"?

Basically, what I have concluded is that these "social" websites are basically a free, web-based applications that let people create small personal web pages.

Since the web pages are on a centralized "server", they are easily indexable and searchable, which is nifty if you want to do things like go looking for long-lost friends or people who share similar interests.

Myself, I don't get the appeal.

Re:It's stupid WINDOWS users, duhh

First of all, stupidity doesn't mean you deserve what you get. Second of all, using Windows has nothing to do with it. All the smart Windows users are blissfully uninfected, the problem is stupidity, not OS choice.

Re:Honest reply

I was quite unaware of that fact, but nonetheless... the issue here isn't facebook per se... it is the fact that any third party can write an application that gets all your data, and nobody really understands the implications of this...

Ian