Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cybercrime

Zscaler Releases Browser Plug-In to Combat Facebook Likejacking Attacks

Zscaler, a provider of cloud-based Internet security services, today released tool designed to help protect against malicious threats, scams and spam propagated on Facebook through a technique called “Likejacking.”

The tool, Zscaler Likejacking Prevention, comes in the form of a Web browser plug-in and is currently available for Firefox, Chrome and Safari browsers.

Zscaler, a provider of cloud-based Internet security services, today released tool designed to help protect against malicious threats, scams and spam propagated on Facebook through a technique called “Likejacking.”

The tool, Zscaler Likejacking Prevention, comes in the form of a Web browser plug-in and is currently available for Firefox, Chrome and Safari browsers.

Likejacking is a form of Clickjacking, a technique that uses a modified (and malicious) URL with embedded code to carry out the attack and trick users into “liking” a page without necessarily realizing that they are recommending it to all of their Facebook friends and enabling the attacker to spread malicious links, propagate spam and conduct other types of social engineering attacks.

Facbook Likejacking AttacksWith Likejacking, attackers exploit the Facebook “Like” button and other widgets – including the latest announced “Listened,” “Watched” and “Read” gestures, game “Challenge” button, and even the “Dislike” button if implemented – by getting people to click them. The “Like” buttons are often hidden transparently behind a “Play” or other button, causing you to click without knowing that you just unintentionally “Liked” something; this causes the content to appear in your friends’ News Feeds with a link back to the “Liked” website.

According to Zscaler and most industry threat reports, there has been a significant increase in the number of Clikjacking and Likejacking attacks across Facebook, with unsuspecting users and their friends falling victim constantly. “Our findings are consistent with other security researchers, who estimate that approximately 15 percent of Facebook videos alone are, in fact, Likejacking attacks,” said Julien Sobrier, senior researcher, Zscaler ThreatLabZ, and developer of the new Zscaler Likejacking Prevention tool. “In 2010, for example, hundreds of thousands of Facebook users fell victim to a single scheme alone.”

“As Web 2.0 sites increase their use of social plug-ins such as the Facebook ‘Like’ button, attackers are shifting to malicious clickjacking techniques, which are not being detected by browsers,” Sobrier added. Proactive tools like the new Zscaler Likejacking Prevention tool will provide simple yet effective protection against Likejacking and any type of clickjacking impacting Facebook widgets.”

Zscaler is also the company that developed “BlackSheep,” the Firefox plug-in that helps end users identify usage of FireSheep, the controversial Firefox extension that makes it dead simple to tap into someone’s social networking and email accounts (and many others) by “hijacking” user sessions while connecting via unsecured wireless networks. The company also provides Zscaler Safe Shopping, a free Firefox plugin that warns users when they visit a domain identified by Zscaler as potentially malicious. The plugin utilizes Zscaler’s cloud infrastructure to provide constant updates as compromised or fake online stores are identified.

The Zscaler Likejacking Prevention plug-in available as a free download here

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.
Written By

For more than 15 years, Mike Lennon has been closely monitoring the threat landscape and analyzing trends in the National Security and enterprise cybersecurity space. In his role at SecurityWeek, he oversees the editorial direction of the publication and is the Director of several leading security industry conferences around the world.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Cybercrime

As it evolves, web3 will contain and increase all the security issues of web2 – and perhaps add a few more.

Cybercrime

Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus Group informed some customers last week that their online accounts had been breached by hackers.

Cybercrime

Zendesk is informing customers about a data breach that started with an SMS phishing campaign targeting the company’s employees.

Cybercrime

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft calls attention to a series of zero-day remote code execution attacks hitting its Office productivity suite.

Artificial Intelligence

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 has demonstrated the potential of AI for both good and bad.

Cybercrime

Satellite TV giant Dish Network confirmed that a recent outage was the result of a cyberattack and admitted that data was stolen.