Hurricane Irene surely turned New York City into the “city that never sleeps,” as it brought floodwaters, knocked out power for more than 4 million people, and was even responsible for at least 15 deaths in six states.
What’s worse is that cybercriminals are taking advantage of the incident by spamming a fake video on Facebook.
The page, which contains the alarming title “VIDEO SHOCK – Hurricane Irene New York kills All,” displays a clickable image of a fake video player.
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The text displayed on the succeeding pages is written in Italian, which suggests that the attack specifically targets Italian users. Clicking the image of the video displays a prompt that says, “Per Vedere il video devi prima condividere,” which translates to “To see the video you must first share,” as well as two options that say “Share” and “See the video.”
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Clicking “Share” displays the link to the Facebook page on the user’s wall.
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On the other hand, clicking “See the video” displays a list of deals that the user must register to in order to view the video.
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The said deals only lead to advertising and affiliate program websites.
Such schemes in Facebook have been rampant in the past weeks, as we’ve seen similar scams that lead to spam or survey pages. We’ve seen these attacks use various social engineering lures like false news on the death of singer Lady Gaga, tickets for the Twilight movie, “Breaking Dawn,” and invites to join Google+.
For more information on threats found in social networks like Facebook, check out our report, Spam, Scams, and Other Social Media Threats, and our infograph, The Geography of Social Media Threats.
