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Koobface haunts Facebook again

The need for members of social networking site Facebook to ensure their machines have fully updated anti-virus software has been highlighted by a fourth wave of the Koobface worm.

An online security expert has warned that a variant of the online threat is spreading on the social networking site using a social engineering exploit to expose unsuspecting users to online threats.

The worm is said to spread in the form of a message from a "friend" urging recipients to have a look at a video, which happens to be hosted on a spoofed YouTube site complete with a "profile" of the said friend.

However, according to Rik Ferguson of Trend Micro, trying to watch the video may open the door for the new Koobface variant that has been identified as WORM_KOOBFACE.AZ and hiding behind the file setup.exe.

"In the last hour, we've seen 300+ different unique IP addresses hosting setup.exe and we're expecting more," he said in a blog post.

An earlier version of the online threat was spotted in December.

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