Facebook Farm Town game hit by virus

Security experts have advised Farm Town's 9.6 million Facebook players to perform an immediate virus scan on their computers, after it was discovered that the site had been serving up adverts infected with malware.

SlashKey, the company behind Farm Town, warned that some of the adverts appearing around the game contained fake antivirus alerts, and were designed to con players in to believing their computer was infected with a virus. Players would then click on the advert to purchase antivirus software, but the site would trick them out of their credit card details.

Sophos, a computer security company, said that hundreds of Farm Town users had reported problems, but that many other users could unknowingly be affected by the scam.

"Poisoned adverts appear to be trickling onto their PCs from a third-party advertising network," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. "Players of games like Farm Town are not all geeks, and might easily fall hard and fast for a bogus security warning – straight into the hands of hackers.

"Rather than SlashKey simply asking its players to report offending adverts when they appear, the company should disable third-party Farm Town adverts until the problem is fixed. Doing anything less is surely showing a careless disregard for the safety of its players," he said.

"Until the makers of Farm Town resolve the problem of malicious adverts, my advice to its fans would be to stop playing the game and ensure that their computer is properly defended with up-to-date security software."

Cluley said that so-called "scareware" attacks were on the increase. Hackers and fraudsters have been buoyed by the success of previous campaigns, and have found consumers can be easily tricked in to clicking on legitimate-looking links.