December 19th, 2007
First prediction for 2008 to come true
Google’s social network, Orkut, has been attacked by a worm that uses “scrap book” messages to propogate. It’s only action is to spread and add Orkut members to a group called “infected by the Orkut virus.” according to this IDG news article.
From the blogger that is covering this, Kee Hinkley:
You get an email notification (or find out on Orkut) that you have a new scrapbook entry. It’s from a friend. It says.
2008 vem ai… que ele comece mto bem para vc
There’s no need to click on anything, just viewing it does the trick. The scrap deletes itself, and adds you to the Orkut Community “Infectados pelo Vírus do Orkut”. That group, as I write this, is gaining members at a rate of at least one hundred per minute.
Let’s see, that was my first and second predictions for 2008, that social networks will be attacked. Luckily this attack took the form of a benign hack to demonstrate a vulnerability (much more effective then publishing a Top Ten Threats list!).
More to come of course….
Update 13:30 Pacific. More technical details of the Orkut virus here.
Richard Stiennon is an industry consultant. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
