According to the Czech security firm TrustPort, social networking’s popularity and ease of use can cause users to forget its risks. These risks include the loss of private personal data and malware infection. Even though social networking is new, a recent IBM (IBM) X-Force report says the threats are not. According to IBM, traditional threats like phishing, malware, 419 fraud schemes, identity theft, data harvesting, and botnets now use social networks as attack vectors.
Many social networking users fall victim to attackers offering new apps or features for joining the group. Net Security.org cites the Facebook Stalker Catcher as an example of such a scam. Even though this malicious app appeared in 2009, Facebook users still fall victim to it. To start a Stalker Catcher attack, Net Security.org says users are lured to the group on the pretext that they will see exactly who and when is visiting their personal profile. The alleged instructions for feature activation result in nothing more and nothing less than sending group invitations to all contacts of the victim.
Sunbelt Software reports that the latest scam targeting Facebook users specifically targets kids. The scam promises a free proxy service for those who want to bypass parental controls and blocks set up by schools. The scam tempts the victims to try the service at hxxp://myfatherisonline.com to access Facebook in school. Of course, when the victims visit the website, they can’t find the advertised service. The researchers instead found a plethora of scam attempts. The victims are faced with an affiliate site containing malware, surveys, quizzes, and offers for free iPhones that will try to get them to subscribe to a premium rate service or sign up for spam.
The number of users who voluntarily join fraudulent groups and send invitations to all their contacts is strikingly high. In the Net Security.org article, IBM says the informal feel of social networks is the real risk.
We’re all friends here,” you’re thinking to yourself, and you’re mind chooses to ignore the things that would usually set off alarm bells in your head. Who knows – maybe it’s our inherent sense of safety that we get when surrounded by lot of people? Safety in numbers, so to speak. In any case, most of us are just less careful.
These same users then access Facebook at work, exposing their employers to more risks. The anti-malware firm Sophos recently found that reports (PDF) by companies of spam and malware derived from social networks were up 70 percent from a year earlier and concludes that “Because of this, social networks have become one of the most significant vectors for data loss and identity theft.”
Due to this carelessness, the criminals behind the scams quickly gain large databases of contacts. These databases are later sold to other cybercriminals and used for sending spam or for further phishing scams. Some fraudulent groups explicitly invite users to install a particular application, which is even more dangerous. According to the article, the risk of malware infection should never be underestimated.
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So the important message here is:
- Keep your computer up to date
- Use regularly updated antivirus and antispyware software
- Verify what you are doing before you do it
- If it is too good to be true, it probably is
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Data from anti-malware vendor 
Researchers at the 
-Updated 11-01-10- 
