It’s not unusual for Facebook scammers to take advantage of buzz around a new product or technological breakthrough to fool unsuspecting users. And according to a team of security researchers, the latest such attack involves ads placed through hijacked Facebook business and community pages for downloadable AI tools.

According to the researchers’ report released this week, these legitimate-looking ads offer to give users a link to download the latest AI language learning tools. Then, once the victim downloads the file, their computer is exposed to a malware attack that is highly affordable and easy to execute for hackers. And because these attacks are coming from what seem to be legitimate businesses, they can effectively target vast numbers of users at the same time.

“These posts are designed to appear legitimate, using the buzz around OpenAI language models to trick unsuspecting users into downloading the files,” the researchers wrote in their report. “However, once the user downloads and extracts the file, the RedLine Stealer malware is activated and can steal passwords and download further malware onto the user’s device.”

As always, the best way to avoid attacks like this is to simply never download anything from a source you don’t know on Facebook — no matter how legit it may appear.

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