BURLINGTON, Ma. – A report Monday from IT security and data protection firm Sophos has revealed an alarming rise in attacks on users of social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, by cybercriminals.
Sophos’s “Social Security” investigation reveals that criminals have increasingly focused attacks on social networking users in the last 12 months, with an explosion in the reports of spam and malware:
57 percent of users report they have been spammed via social networking sites, a rise of 70.6% from last year. And 36 percent reveal they have been sent malware via social networking sites, a rise of 69.8 percent from last year
“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. “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 surveyed more than 500 organizations, and discovered that 72 percent are concerned that employee behavior on social networking sites exposes their businesses to danger, and puts corporate infrastructure, and the sensitive data stored upon it, at risk.
The “Social Security” survey is just one part of Sophos’s 2010 Security Threat Report, which explores current and emerging computer security trends. It reveals that criminals identify potential victims on social networks, and then attack them, both at home and at work. In Sophos’s opinion, many Web 2.0 sites are concentrating too much on growing their marketshare at the expense of properly defending their existing users from Internet threats.
Survey respondents were also asked which social network they believed posed the biggest security risk, with 60 percent naming Facebook:
1. Facebook: 60 percent
2. MySpace: 18 percent
3. Twitter: 17 percent
4. LinkedIn: 4 percent
“We shouldn’t forget that Facebook is by far the largest social network – and you’ll find more bad apples in the biggest orchard,” Cluley said. “The truth is that the security team at Facebook works hard to counter threats on their site – it’s just that policing 350 million users can’t be an easy job for anyone. But there is no doubt that simple changes could make Facebook users safer. For instance, when Facebook rolled-out its new recommended privacy settings late last year, it was a backwards step, encouraging many users to share their information with everybody on the Internet.”
Sophos’s Threat Report also reveals that 49 percent of firms allow all their staff unfettered access to Facebook, a 13 percent rise on a year ago.
“The grim irony is that just as companies are loosening their attitude to staff activity on social networks, the threat of malware, spam, phishing and identity theft on Facebook is increasing,” said Cluley. “However, social networks can be an essential part of the business mix today, and the answer is not to bar staff from participating in them, but to apply some ‘social security’ instead.”
Although LinkedIn is considered to be by far the least threatening of the networks, Sophos advises that it can still provide a sizeable pool of information for hackers.
“Targeted attacks against companies are in the news at the moment, and the more information a criminal can get about your organization’s structure, the easier for them to send a poisoned attachment to precisely the person whose computer they want to break into,” said Cluley. “Sites like LinkedIn provide hackers with what is effectively a corporate directory, listing your staff’s names and positions. This makes it child’s play to reverse-engineer the email addresses of potential victims.”
This column was written by Mark Cox of ConnectIT, an IntegratedMar.Com
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