Would you Spot this Malware?

I recently wrote about how social engineering and human nature is used to trick us into downloading files which infiltrate our computers. When I signed on to Facebook today the first thing I noticed was an obviously malware post. I’d like to think all of you would know immediately not to click the this link. I deleted the post so others wouldn't click on it and phoned our young friend who posted it. Not surprisingly she had no idea how it was posted and as I suggested she signed on to change her Facebook password.

Would you have detected this as an obvious scam?

Even I know that Justin Bieber is too young for Miley Cyrus.

As a researcher I clicked on this link to see where it went. So in case you’re curious, here’s what happens. In this case, the Bit.ly service was smart enough to know this link was suspicious. Bit.ly is a service which allows you to create a shortcut of a long url. This is useful if you need to include a web address in a short message like those required on Twitter. Unfortunately, these short addresses don't let you see where a link takes you.

If I was still silly enough to continue the real fun begins with an invitation to share this with all my friends.

If this was really shared by 95,071 friends it’s really scary. I often wonder if someday I won’t need to keep developing my WinPatrol program. I suspect it will be a while until I get to retire.