Here’s one of those “glass is half full / glass is trying to steal your identity” stories. Security researchers at Seculert have identified what they’re calling the Ramnit worm, which appears to have stolen more than 45,000 Facebook logins in its terror spree so far. The damage seems to have been limited to mostly England and France but the concern now is that since so many people use the same passwords for their Gmail, work email, Outlook, and so on, that the worm will spread a lot further.
Public service announcement:
USE DIFFERENT PASSWORDS FOR DIFFERENT ACCOUNTS MY GOD WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE WHEN WILL YOU EVER LEARN BAHHHHH!
The worm was first discovered in April 2010 stealing sensitive information such as stored FTP credentials and browser cookies. In August 2011, after malware developers borrowed source code from the Zeus botnet, Ramnit “went financial.” With that added strength, Ramnit was able to “gain remote access to financial institutions, compromise online banking sessions and penetrate several corporate networks.” Approximately 800,000 machines were infected between September 2011 and the end of the year.
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