Malware is a constant threat on the internet because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up making you lose access to your account. Social media accounts as well as other online accounts that you might end up making at some point or another are all going to be important for your day to day life, so losing access to these accounts is most definitely not going to be something that you would ideally want to end up dealing with.
A new kind of malware has emerged, and while it might not exactly be the most complicated and advanced malware that researchers have seen in the past few years, it has certainly done a lot of damage and it has the potential to do quite a bit more. This malware has been dubbed CopperStealer by the people over at Proofpoint, and its main focus tends to be Facebook and Instagram accounts although other versions have also been spotted that target a wide range of other accounts including Apple, Bing, Amazon and the like.
The way this malware works is that if you go to a site that is meant to give you software and app cracks for free, a lot of these sites would end up infecting your system with the malware. The malware would then obtain all of the passwords that you would have saved in your web browser, with virtually every single major web browser being susceptible to these kinds of attacks. Most people are using their browsers to save passwords since this can help them save the hassle that can come with putting passwords in on a regular basis.
It’s not just passwords that are getting stolen either. Your cookies can also be harvested which would enable the hackers to obtain log in tokens for Facebook as well as create a whole list of other people that they can end up targeting based on your friends list among other things. This basically means that once one person gets infected, the malware will start to spread at an exponential rate which will be really difficult to stop in any way.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that it’s not the practice of saving passwords on web browsers that’s at fault here. Rather, it’s the practice of trying to get cracks for software from suspicious websites. The ethics of doing such a thing can be debated for a really long time, but suffice it to say that the only way to truly be safe is to just buy the official version of the software and staying safe from malware entirely more or less.
Photo: WhataWin / Getty Images
A new kind of malware has emerged, and while it might not exactly be the most complicated and advanced malware that researchers have seen in the past few years, it has certainly done a lot of damage and it has the potential to do quite a bit more. This malware has been dubbed CopperStealer by the people over at Proofpoint, and its main focus tends to be Facebook and Instagram accounts although other versions have also been spotted that target a wide range of other accounts including Apple, Bing, Amazon and the like.
The way this malware works is that if you go to a site that is meant to give you software and app cracks for free, a lot of these sites would end up infecting your system with the malware. The malware would then obtain all of the passwords that you would have saved in your web browser, with virtually every single major web browser being susceptible to these kinds of attacks. Most people are using their browsers to save passwords since this can help them save the hassle that can come with putting passwords in on a regular basis.
It’s not just passwords that are getting stolen either. Your cookies can also be harvested which would enable the hackers to obtain log in tokens for Facebook as well as create a whole list of other people that they can end up targeting based on your friends list among other things. This basically means that once one person gets infected, the malware will start to spread at an exponential rate which will be really difficult to stop in any way.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that it’s not the practice of saving passwords on web browsers that’s at fault here. Rather, it’s the practice of trying to get cracks for software from suspicious websites. The ethics of doing such a thing can be debated for a really long time, but suffice it to say that the only way to truly be safe is to just buy the official version of the software and staying safe from malware entirely more or less.
Photo: WhataWin / Getty Images
