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Facebook viruses
May 15 2011
One of my friends in Facebook recently got stung by a virus; I was able to look
at the source code for the virus before Facebook's security team
removed it.
The virus is written in straightforward Javascript and does the following:
- The virus assumes that someone is logged in to their Facebook account.
- The virus uses XMLHttpRequest to post a wall message telling
people to download the virus. This is posted to all of the user's
friend's pages.
- The virus then redirects the user to a page with an advertisement.
The way for browsers to protect themselves from this virus is simple:
They should not allow people to enter Javascript code in one's location
toolbar. Or, if that is too limiting, they should not allow XMLHttpRequest
to be run in Javascript in a URL.
I have just revamped the web page design of my website. I always felt the
old site design was a little too sparse; the new design is tighter. The new
design also removes the dated photo of myself from the top of my
web page.
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