Koobface: The evolution of the social botnet

The botnet that we now know as Koobface was quietly launched against an unsuspecting Facebook and MySpace community on July 31, 2008. Anti-virus company, Kaspersky Labs, announced the news on their website August 1 st that they had discovered a new type of malware that spread primarily by sending messages from one infected user's account to that of their friends in the form of personal messages recommending that the friends visit a webpage that would prompt them to install a “video player update” in order to watch the recommended video 1 . At that time, Facebook had barely 100 million users, or one fourth of its current accounts. No one would suspect that two years later the malware would continue to be one of the most prevalent botnets on the planet.