McAfee reverses Koobface threat warning

It turns out Koobface is washed up – not raging.

Last week, McAfee released a threat report showing samples of Koobface, the Facebook spreading worm, spiking in the Internet wild all through the first three months of 2013.

But on Friday, the anti-virus giant that's now part of Intel did a complete reversal.

In a cryptically-worded blog post , researcher Craig Schmugar notes that sample counts can be "influenced by repacking of the same underlying code . . . and other forms of server or client polymorphisms."

Schmugar confesses that "these factors led to our Koobface statisitcs being off by a large margin."

Facebook issued no public statement. But the company's PR agency contacted all the publications that ran with McAfee's initial, alarming, survey results.

Cyberattacks are real and pose tangible risk to consumers and businesses. And public awareness is not what it should be. McAfee is not alone when it comes to competitive vendors walking -- and sometime stepping over – the thin line between building public awareness and fear mongering to gin up sales. But this faux-pas hints at the competitive pressures. Schmugar's post, titled "Koobface Count Correction," did not include an apology.

source:http://www.usatoday.com/story/cybertruth/2013/06/10/mcafee-reverses-koobface-threat-warning-facebook-users-not-under-threat/2410143/

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