Hackers threaten social networks

Social networking sites not only attract ordinary Net surfers but also high-tech criminals. Security experts predict this will be the target of this type of crime in 2008.

Network security companies recommend the seemingly friendly nature of these sites to make it easy for people to share information and thereby turn them into objects of attacks. Detailed information obtained from these sites makes it easier to send spam and phishing.

There's no denying that 2007 was a brilliant social networking site like MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Orkut, when millions of people registered and posted personal information and hobby online.

But in 2008 these sites will become the subject of attack by technology criminal groups behind most online cases.

Mary Landesman, senior security researcher at ScanSafe, says social networking becomes dangerous due to two reasons: the technologies applied to it and third-party applications.

At the end of 2007, Brazilian netizens using Google's Orkut site were the subject of attack by a worm trying to steal bank account information. The program also attempts to attack computers that have been compromised, spread through snare links placed on Orkut users' personal pages.

High-tech criminals are targeting social networks ( Source: AP )

Other attacks are aimed at the popularity of video clips on sites like YouTube by placing trap links in short movie slides.

The technology gap in this network comes with problems about the amount of information that people share on social networks.

This data provides criminals with information about the names of employees at a company, its governance structure and its processes to create credibility targeting other attacks. This information can be very specific and specific such as company name, events and employees.

Landesman said that the information could help hackers cheat employees by disguising themselves as a colleague or business partner.

David Porter, responsible for security at Detica, said the familiarity of social networking sites helps people establish relationships with people who share their hobby information, which means people are Careless with your personal information. 'Notably, all social network users post information about life, emotional life, work and habits for the whole world while they are afraid to share this kind of information with a stranger. met in the bar. Information like this is extremely valuable to fraudsters who impersonate. '

Redirecting to social sites will be a new step compared to attacking vulnerabilities in the Windows operating system to take computers and steal data.

According to Paul King, senior security consultant for Cisco, criminals are more advanced in their ability to use phishing emails to exploit users. ' Many attacks have nothing to do with exploitation. They just need you to click on a link and there is no risk from that. '

A big challenge in 2008 for individuals and companies is to accept and recognize the dangers they are facing. However, users should not be too worried about these potential problems because the use of social networks still has many benefits and the reverse side of it does not bother people too much.

Paul King's conclusion is to try to control the risk rather than avoid it.