Bach Seat

Data from anti-malware vendor Sophos‘ 2010 Security Threat Report (PDF) says Facebook is the leader in privacy risks, spam, and other malicious activity. 60 percent of the respondents to a Sophos survey identified Facebook as the biggest security risk in social networking, followed by MySpace (18%), Twitter (17%), and LinkedIn (4%).

It is not surprising that users regard Facebook as the top risk. Facebook’s over 500 million users, offer criminals a cornucopia of personal data to exploit. “Computer users are spending more time on social networks, sharing sensitive and valuable personal information, and hackers have sniffed out where the money is to be made,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos.

Criminals have focused their efforts on social media

Sophos’ research shows that criminals have focused their efforts on social networking users in the last 12 months creating an “explosion” in social networking spam and malware complaints. Sophos found that 57% of social network users were spammed on one of the sites, an increase of 70 percent compared to last year.  They also found 36%  of social network users reported being sent malware, a 70% increase over last year. “The dramatic rise in attacks in the last year tells us that social networks and their millions of users have to do more to protect themselves from organized cybercrime, or risk falling prey to identity theft schemes, scams, and malware attacks,” Sophos’ Cluley added.

Three things working against Facebook users

There are three things working against Facebook users, themselves, malware, and Facebook. Facebook users typically give away more private information to Facebook than other sites. Though most people’s profiles it is possible to find out their first, last, and maiden names, where they live, where they went to school, and even worse, historical information like where they lived in the past. A lot of this private information is required on many online credit checks, providing a boom for criminals looking to exploit a user’s credit history or steal their identity.

The most common malware used on social networks is Koobface. Koobface can target all the popular social portals, including Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, Tagged, and Twitter. According to the report, Koobface is capable of, “... registering a Facebook account, activating the account by confirming an email sent to a Gmail address, befriending random strangers on the site, joining random Facebook groups, and posting messages on the walls of Facebook friends. Furthermore, it includes code to avoid drawing attention to itself by restricting how many new Facebook friends it makes each day.”

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.