New opportunities for the spread of malicious code
Christmas celebration opens new opportunities for the spread of malicious code on social media, said Panda Labs.
The vast association of users and profiles that are relatively easy to acquire, have made Facebook a huge attractive channel to spread the ding of malicious code. When one combines this with Christmas celebrations - which is one of the favorite seasons of the same type of activity, we get an explosive combination where new viruses are wondering the users with the Christmas celebration as bait.
The reason that social networking has become so attractive, is the false security feeling more users to content that is shared through networks.
- Users rely generally on the messages and content they receive, and this results in that hackers get great response through these channels, "explains Luis Corrons of Panda Labs.
Watch out for the Christmas greetings
This is partly the case with the latest variant of the well-known worm Koobface.GK, said Panda Labs said in a statement. An innocent Christmas message in the form of a video, which is located on a YouTube-like site - resulting in the user downloads and installs the worm, by playing the video. The picture below shows a video of the aforementioned type: 
Once the virus has been installed on the user's computer, there will come a captcha request where the user is asked to render the two words. This is a method used to separate humans and computers apart, by such registration on a website. Each time the letter combination is correctly reproduced, the worm will register a new account where the video will be saved for further sharing.
As said, this is not the first time Christmas celebration will be used to spread malicious code, but in contrast to earlier - the Christmas greetings were often sent via e-mail, there are now social networking is being used.
Tips when using social networking
Panda Labs provide the following tips when using social networks:
1.Not click on suspicious links from sources you are not sure. This applies to messages on Facebook and other social networks, but also e-mail.
2.If you click on a link, but does not recognize the target page - close the browser.
3.If you do not detect any abnormality on goal, but are asked to download anything - do not accept it.
4.If you happen to download or install anything on your PC and unknown messages or other symptoms show up - the computer is most likely to become infected.
You should always ensure that your computer is protected. You can protect yourself by including the new Cloud Panda Antivirus solution that is freely available from Panda Labs.
