Holidays Offer Scam on Facebook Drops Malware on User PCs

Crooks are targeting English and Portuguese speaking Facebook users with “Holidays special offers malware scam.”

It’s that time of the year when social media is full of free stuff from marketers who want to gather as many leads as possible and possibly convert them later on — Giveaways or discounts are the best marketing practices these days on social media but this really has opened gates for scammers to trick users into installing malware by luring them into these offers.

Offer currently running in The Portuguese language

One such offer is affecting the Facebook users speaking Portuguese in South America. It offers people something for free and takes them to malicious pages where scammers have already planted malware and trojan to expose user’s PC.

This offer has already been replicated in English, so beware of any such offers on any social media platform until you really know the link is safe.

Here are screenshots of two ongoing scams on Facebook

How to identify the scam?

The best way to identify scam is by looking at the URL of the offer if it’s a shortened URL, better to ignore the offer because most of the spammy offers come from shortened URLs so that’s one of the best indicators for edging out the spammers.

If a user gets tricked into one of these offers, attackers install Spy Banker Downloader Trojan and then a Spy Banker Trojan Telax for stealing bank credentials from the system.

How can it affect you?

With that, Trojan infects the system with malware and rootkits which nearly hijacks user’s system. The malware can even trick users into handing them information relevant to Facebook’s two-step verification.