There are already many known ways by which cybercriminals target Facebook users. In the infographic we recently released, “The Geography of Social Media Threats,” we illustrated the different social networking features cybercriminals abused and the threats that these usually lead to.

In the course of conducting research, we found one specific attack that targeted Facebook users through a different route—malvertisements.

We encountered an infection chain wherein the user is led from a page within Facebook to a couple of ad sites then, finally, to a page that hosts exploits. When we traced the connection between the ad sites and Facebook, we found that the ad providers were affiliated with a certain Facebook application. We checked out the said application and found that it is indeed ad supported. We were able to come up with the likely infection chain based on this finding:

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