Avoid Social Networking Dangers

Social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo have experienced a huge surge in popularity recently. Sites like these allow users to communicate with their friends and meet new friends, but they can also expose them to malware, phishing and other online dangers. As the use of Web 2.0 applications, like social networking sites, wikis and blogs continues to rise, they are attracting increased attention from cyber criminals. Many of the users flocking to these sites are new to the Internet and lack experience in dealing with online threats.

The threats described in this article have now been countered by site owners, but new ones will appear in future as attackers develop their techniques in response to improved security. The interactive nature of social networking sites allows them to spread threats very quickly, making them attractive targets. Many of these threats exploit the fact that people trust their friends, without realizing that it is important to treat electronic communications with care, no matter who they seem to be from.

As with other aspects of Internet use, threats can be divided into two categories: behavior-based and technology-based.

Behavior-Based

Behavior-based threats arise because users are not careful enough about the personal information they put in their online profiles, making themselves vulnerable to identity theft and phishing attacks. Users often publish information about their friends or workmates, their likes and dislikes, their jobs and hobbies without realizing that this information is valuable to identity thieves as it can help them improve their credibility.

Sophos, an IT security company, carried out research on a random sample of Facebook users which showed that 41% of them would give out personal information like as email address, birthday and phone number to a complete stranger. They posted a fictitious Facebook profile for a green plastic frog named Freddi and sent out 200 friend requests to random users across the world. 87 of those contacted replied and 82 of them supplied personal data, such as email addresses, date of birth, information about their education or workplace, address and phone number, as well as pictures of friends and family and information about partners, pastimes and likes and dislikes.

In 2007 Internet Safety website Get Safe Online found that a quarter of UK social networking users had posted confidential personal information, such as their address or phone number on their social networking profiles. 13% of them had posted information or photos of other people online without their knowledge. This figure increased to a worrying 27% among users aged 18-24.

Phishing isn't the only threat to be found on social networking websites. Eleven students at a high school near Toronto were suspended for posting comments about their principal on Facebook after the school imposed a ban on electronic devices and implemented a uniform policy. A school spokesman described the comments as vulgar and profane and claimed that they amounted to amounted to cyber-bullying.

There have been several stories claiming that young girls have been raped by older men who encountered them via MySpace or Facebook, but none of these appear to have been conclusively proved. The real problem is that social networking sites offer an opportunity for men to meet young girls in an unsupervised environment, something which should be of grave concern to parents.

Technology-Based

Social networking sites can also be a source of technology-based threats. They allow millions of users to post content, so it's fairly inevitable that some of these will be malicious persons attempting to post viruses or spyware.

At the beginning of 2008 more than three million Facebook users were infected with spyware in less than four days. A widget named "Secret Crush" or "My Admirer" is thought to have been downloaded by one and a half million users. It claimed that it would tell users who had a secret crush on them, but actually tricked them into downloading the infamous Zango spyware, which spread by asking unsuspecting users to forward it to five friends.

Anti-virus vendor Symantec has claimed that vulnerabilities which could be used by hackers to snatch control of Windows PCs have been found in ActiveX controls offered to users by both Facebook and MySpace for uploading images to their pages via Internet Explorer (IE). The insecure controls are based on an ActiveX control named Image Uploader, produced by Aurigma Inc.

Towards the end of 2005, 19-year old Samy Kamkar wrote a worm that infected more than a million MYSpace users and caused the site to shut down. The Samy worm added a million friends to his profile within a few hours, adding the string "but most of all, Samy is my hero" to each of their profiles. Kamkar was later sentenced to three years probation and made to perform 90 days of community service.

The biggest privacy breach to date on a social networking site took place in January 2008 when a 17-gigabyte file containing more than half a million pictures obtained from private MySpace profiles appeared on BitTorrent, a well-known peer-to-peer file sharing service. A security flaw, first reported in Autumn 2007, allowed hackers to access the photo galleries of some MySpace users who had set their profiles to private, the default setting for users under 16 years old. This allowed pedophiles and voyeurs to target vulnerable 14- and 15-year-old users.

In December 2007 users of Google's Orkut application based in Brazil were attacked by a worm that attempted to hijack their computers and steal their bank account details. The worm spread via booby-trapped links on the personal page of Orkut users and infected further users when they read messages from friends who had already been exposed.

This loophole was closed quickly, but another worm, called Scrapkut, appeared on Orkut early in 2008. It seemed harmless at first, but it was soon discovered that it could intercept login sessions at several Brazilian banking Web sites and replace components with a fake authentication prompt which could capture the users' logon credentials.

YouTube has also been used indirectly to infect sites with malware. Many Internet users have received spam messages asking them to click on an attached YouTube video clip. The link actually takes them to a fake YouTube sight where they are told that they must install Adobe Flash Player to play the video. Clicking the supplied download link causes a file called install_flash_player.exe. This is the same name as the real Flash installer, but it actually installs a Trojan known as Trojan-Dropper.W32/Agent.

Countering Threats

We've looked at some of the dangers you need to guard against on social networking sites, but what can you do to protect yourself against them? Technology-based attacks can often be repelled by the usual software defenses, ie: anti-virus software can prevent infection by viruses, trojans and worms, and anti-spyware programs can protect you against spyware and adware. A top-quality firewall (remember that the one supplied with Windows XP is fairly basic) can protect you against hackers and Internet safety suites can offer protection against a range of threats.

Behavior-based attacks rely on tricking users into behaving in an unsafe manner. These are more difficult to combat as they can only be countered by a changing user behavior. The Get Safe Online website offers some guidelines for networking safely, including the following:

Don't let peer pressure push you into doing something you're not comfortable with.

Avoid publishing information which can identify you, eg: phone numbers, pictures of your home, workplace or school, your address, birthday or full name.

Avoid including personal information in your username, eg: use laughing_boy33, rather than jim_brown.

Set up a throwaway email account (eg: Hotmail or Yahoo) that doesn't resemble your real name and use that to register and receive mail from the site.

Use a strong password with at least eight characters.

Avoid saying anything or publishing pictures that could embarrass you later.

Use the site's privacy features to restrict access to your profile.

Be on the lookout for phishing scams.

If you make sure that your software defenses are strong and up-to-date and you follow the above guidelines you should be able to enjoy social networking without problems.

Young children should never be allowed access to the Internet in an unsupervised environment. The computer should be located in a family area, such as a lounge or dining room, not hidden away in a bedroom. With older children you should try to monitor their Facebook or MySpace profiles and be on the lookout for any changes in behavior which might suggest that they are encountering online problems.

Article Source: http://www.search4allinfo.com

Ted Hastings has over 35 years experience of IT and education. He has written a textbook on Internet Safety Skills and writes a regular blog entitled Surf Safely.

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