Another Facebook Phishing Site Areps.at Spreads, Blocked

May 21st, 2009

By Justin Smith

Another phishing site is making the rounds on Facebook today, and this time it’s “areps.at” (not linked). However, like other phishing attacks on Facebook, Facebook started blocking all links to the site once its security systems detected its spread this morning.

areps

Facebook doesn’t reveal how many people scams like these affect, but has said in the past that similar phishing attacks have reached “less than 1%” of users. 1% of 200 million is still a significant number of accounts, but it’s likely that Facebook discovered the site earlier than that.

These kinds of phishing attacks are popping up with regular frequency now, and Facebook’s security team continues to develop early detection systems to fight them off. However, attacks like these do illustrate one type of social networking security challenge that’s likely to persist – click through rates on messages from friends are always going to be high, even if the contents of the message are somewhat out of the ordinary.

Facebook’s security team has been working with Microsoft in recent months to detect and fight off variants of the Koobface worm. For more information, check out our previous coverage:

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7 Responses to “Another Facebook Phishing Site Areps.at Spreads, Blocked”

Another Facebook Phishing Site Areps.at Spreads, Blocked | Says:
May 21st, 2009 at 11:39 am
[...] Go here to see the original: Another Facebook Phishing Site Areps.at Spreads, Blocked [...]
LCD CCTV Monitors Says:
May 22nd, 2009 at 9:40 am
It upsets me that people do stuff like this, do they not have anything else better to do with their time other than program spyware, virii and worms?
Is Facebook The New Spam Heaven? Says:
May 25th, 2009 at 11:10 am
[...] and nudz.ru. Some have subject lines such as ‘Look at This’ or “Hello.” According to Inside Facebook, these attacks impact less than one percent of Facebook users. With around 225 million users, that [...]
Facebook Launches Updated Process for Recovering Compromised Accounts Says:
July 17th, 2009 at 11:36 am
[...] most Facebook users have never been affected by security issues like phishing attacks or the Koobface worm, those that do fall victim can sometimes have a hard time getting their [...]
FT.com | Tech Blog | Scammers and spammers target social sites Says:
October 2nd, 2009 at 4:02 pm
[...] that was spreading malware. In August, Twitter was taken down by a political activist. All year, phishing scams have hit social sites, prompting companies such as Facebook to get more proactive about discouraging spammy [...]
Facebook the New Spam Heaven! » Von Brandis.com Says:
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:44 pm
[...] TinyURL Web address shorteners. Some have subject lines such as “Look at This” or “Hello.” According to Inside Facebook, these attacks impact less than 1 percent of Facebook [...]
Facebook the New Spam Heaven! Says:
October 24th, 2009 at 6:53 am
[...] TinyURL Web address shorteners. Some have subject lines such as “Look at This” or “Hello.” According to Inside Facebook, these attacks impact less than 1 percent of Facebook [...]