Hackers are hijacking the profiles of Australian Facebook users and attempting to extort money from their friends using a bogus story about being mugged in London.
Ninemsn has spoken to four Facebook users whose accounts have been hacked — three in the past week — and evidence suggests more have been targeted.
In each instance, the attack followed the same pattern. First the person's user name, password, alternative email address and other details were changed.
The scammers then assumed the user's identity and contacted scores of people, claiming to be stuck in London after being mugged at gunpoint.
It is not clear where the fraudsters are based, if the same people are behind all of the attacks or how the accounts were initially compromised but the London suburb of Kentish Town is mentioned in several exchanges.
At least one person fell for the sophisticated scam and sent cash through to the hackers via a Western Union money transfer.
Experience 'was horrifying'
Sydney music journalist Michaella Solar-March was about to head overseas when her account was broken into last month.
"Two days before I was leaving for an overseas holiday hackers broke into my Facebook account and started contacting people in my friends list, claiming I was stuck in London after being mugged and asking for money," she told ninemsn.
"Some acquaintances of mine came close to sending cash, as they knew I was going overseas but weren't certain of my exact leaving dates, but luckily thought it best to call my close friends and check where I was before sending it."
The hackers were persistent, contacting almost everyone on Ms Solar-March's friend list — nearly 800 people in total.
Digital strategy consultant Mark Neely's account was compromised last week and spent the next three days dealing with the fallout.
The hackers again assumed his identity and contacted numerous people on his friend list, claiming to have been robbed at gunpoint in the UK.
"It's very stressful, receiving phone calls from people you may not have contacted for a long time who are worried about your safety," he said.
Rhiannon Elston, who works as a producer for ninemsn, was also targeted, and called the experience "horrifying".
She found out that her account had been compromised at 3am on Saturday when she received a call from a friend who'd been contacted on Facebook with the same story of being mugged in England and asking for cash to be sent.
"They were very active on the site … at a guess they would have contacted 50 or more of my contacts," Ms Elston said.
"I've been getting calls from Poland, from Sri Lanka, from England.
"It was really horrifying that someone was actually posing as me and using my identity to extort from my friends."
Ninemsn spoke to one further victim who did not wish to be quoted in the story but a friend of this victim actually sent money to the fraudsters via Western Union.
"It makes me feel quite violated in the regard that somebody has taken the identity of a friend of mine and used that element of desperation and helplessness to motivate their friends to help," he said.
"I think that's disgraceful."
An opinion piece in Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper, published on January 10, told a similar story: identity thieves contacted one of the paper's journalists through Facebook by posing as a friend and claiming to have been robbed in London.
More sophisticated phishing
Reports last year suggested China-based scammers were harvesting user names and passwords through Facebook phishing scams then selling these on to fraudsters.
Passwords and user names can also be obtained through key-stroke loggers, a type of malware that infects home computers and sends information about what is typed back to cyber criminals.
Ninemsn contacted Facebook late on Sunday evening US time and was only able to obtain a short response.
The company's representative referred Facebook users to the site's security page and said all users should be wary of requests for money over the internet. Further comment is being sought.
Chris Thomas, an internet security expert with CA, said the attacks demonstrated some of the security risks associated with posting personal information on social networking sites.
"It's made it easier for people to post information but they haven't probably realised that there's not very good security infrastructure," he said.
He said the attacks were like a more sophisticated version of common phishing scams, also known as Nigerian 419 scams, where fraudsters send out far-fetched spam e-mails promising instant wealth.
"It's almost like spear phishing," he said, referring to scams where hackers target selected individuals — often company executives — with sophisticated frauds involving carefully harvested information.
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