Facebook employees hit with malware

Facebook Inc confirmed on Friday that laptops used by its employees had been compromised by malware when staff visited the infected website of a mobile software developer last month.


The incursion was detected when Facebook's network monitoring personnel unearthed a suspect domain and traced it to an employee's computer. The malware discovered on the machine made use of a known vulnerability within Oracle's Java runtime platform. The hole was resolved with a patch released by Oracle on 1 February.


Facebook stressed there was no evidence user data had been accessed, but Bloomberg reported yesterday that the social media company is working with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in an effort to determine the source of the attack.

"As soon as we discovered the presence of the malware, we remediated all infected machines, informed law enforcement, and began a significant investigation that continues to this day," Facebook said.


Earlier this month Twitter revealed it had been subject to an attack and said that as many as 250,000 accounts may have been accessed, including the personal data attached to them. Other attacks on the websites of prominent newspapers The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal were attributed to Chinese hackers.

Multi-million euro cybercrime gang leader arrested in UAE

Spanish police have arrested a gang of cyber criminals who were extorting as much as one million euros a year ($1.3m) using ransomware.

The leader of the gang, a 27-year old Russian, was arrested while on holiday in Dubai in December. Ten other gang members six Russians, two Ukrainians and two Georgians, who were apparently responsible for laundering proceeds of the scam, were arrested in Spain.

The cyber crime used a malware that was first seen in 2005, although the gang adapted it to target end users in 30 countries. The ransomware, known as Reveton, was tailored to look like a message from different police authorities, which would freeze the user PC until they paid a fine of 100 euros for accessing file sharing, child pornography or terrorist sites.

The money was laundered through PaySafeCard/UKash vouchers, with the ransom paid in the US, transferred to the gang in Spain, and laundered and the proceeds wired to Russia.

Trend Micro's eCrimes unit was heavily involved in the investigation, which the company warns is ongoing, and that the Reveton malware is still in the wild.