Urgent warning to millions of Facebook users over dangerous new threat to your account

FACEBOOK and YouTube fans have been warned of a new threat to their accounts.

Experts claim that cyber crooks are hijacking people’s accounts to mine cryptocurrencies.

Getty

YouTube users have also been affected[/caption]

Bitdefender’s Advanced Threat Control Team (ATC) believes hundreds of people were hit in the second half of last year alone.

While the hack may not raid your own bank account, it is a sly and somewhat alarming money-maker.

And it will probably slow down your internet connection.

It basically uses your Facebook or YouTube profile to boost view counts on their own dubious social media accounts.

This can obviously be used to generate cash through advertising clicks.

The infostealer – dubbed S1deload Stealer – can apparently avoid detection from antivirus software.

Once infected, it’ll run in the background, loading various Facebook and YouTube accounts without you knowing.

But it could be even more devastating if you run or manage a Facebook group.

It’ll scour your account to check and has the potential to spread its malware further.

“The stealer component we observed in the wild steals the saved credentials from the victim’s browser, exfiltrating them to the malware author’s server,” Bitdefender researcher Dávid Ács explained.

“The malware author uses the newly obtained credentials to spam on social media and infect more machines, creating a feedback loop.”

Online criminals pull it off by hiding the infostealer in dubious files.

In this case, they are zip files for X-rated content, which is especially risky.

So users should always be careful of what they’re downloading.

---

We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk

---