Facebook Malware: Year-Old 'Big Butt' Scam Resurfaces On Facebook

A phishing scam quickly spread through Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) on Monday by appealing to users that like big butts and cant lie.

The scam creates a fake Facebook post on users’ walls with a thumbnail of a woman’s rear-end and a caption that reads, “[Video] – At 17, she did THIS in public high school, EVERY day! Outrageous?” But the link isn’t a video at all, just a box asking users to input five letters.

Once the user does this, the video is reposted on that user’s Timeline, using those five letters as a comment.

What’s especially troubling is that reports of this scam can be traced back to at least the summer of 2012. The caption was slightly different, but is mostly the same. How has Facebook not done anything to remove the scam from the social network?

Last year, E Hacker News spotted the scam and reported that it only targeted users in Australia, U.S., Canada, South Africa, France, Ireland and the U.K. Users in other countries will just be redirected to Google.

It’s unclear if this scam does anything else besides repost the link on Facebook, but users need to be suspicious of any unknown source that takes action on social media without permission. Similar Facebook scams have been found to contain the Zeus malware, which is able to drain bank accounts.

Users that click on the link should immediately change their Facebook password. It would also be a good idea to reset the Web browser to clear out saved passwords to prevent the malware from accessing other accounts.