AVG researchers spot rogue applications on Facebook

AVG researchers indicated that from midnight to 9 am EST on Saturday, May 15, 2010, AVG software detected and blocked more than three hundred thousand rogue applications. That rate was more than three times the rate of the number two for the day for rogue anti-spyware.

"This latest issue really underscores how powerful, while at the same time vulnerable, social networking applications are. This attack was actually stunning in terms of scale," said Roger Thompson, AVG's Chief Research Officer. "Facebook is very responsive to threats when we identify them, and removing these applications as soon as they find them, but they're still able to generate huge traffic, just because of the viral nature of social networks. It is staggering how many threats were propagated before they were

Last week's rogue push peaked at about 80,000 for the day, and had dwindled to just a couple of hundred per day by Friday, May 14, 2010. At that point AVG researchers were hopeful that the adware attack would cease; however, all indications point to the fact that they were just gearing up for a fresh start¦ and a powerful one at that.