Social networking sites, MySpace, Facebook and Bebo, and have climbed in popularity recently. They allow users to keep in contact with their friends and meet new ones, but they can also expose them to viruses, spyware and other online dangers. As the use of Web 2.0 applications, like wikis, blogs and social networking sites increases, they attract the attention of cyber criminals. Many of the people who use these sites are relatively new to the Internet and they can lack experience in dealing with online threats.
Many of the threats discussed in this article are historical. They have now been countered by site owners, but new ones will appear as attackers develop their methods in response to improved security. Social networking sites can spread threats very quickly, due to their interactive nature. This makes them very attractive as targets. Many threats take advantage of the fact that people trust their friends, and fail to realize how important it is to treat electronic communications with care, irrespective of their apparent source.
As with other aspects of Internet use, threats fall into two categories: behaviour-based and technology-based.
Behavior-Based Threats
Behaviour-based threats arise largely because users are careless regarding the personal information they share online. This can leave them vulnerable to phishing attacks and identity theft. Users often publish details of their friends, their likes and dislikes, hobbies and jobs, without realizing that this information can be invaluable to identity thieves as it can help them appear more credible.
Research carried out by IT security company Sophos on a random sample of Facebook users showed that 41% were prepared to divulge personal information like email address, date of birth and phone number to a complete stranger. The research involved creating a fictitious Facebook profile for a green plastic frog named Freddi and sending out 200 friend requests to randomly-chosen users throughout the world. 87 of the users contacted responded and 82 of them supplied personal information, including email addressed, date of birth, details about their education or workplace, address and phone number, as well as photos of friends and family and information about spouses, likes and dislikes and hobbies.
Internet Safety website Get Safe Online found in 2007 that one in four British social networking users had posted confidential personal information, such as their address or phone number or on their profiles. 13% of users had posted information or photos of other people online without their permission. This figure increased to an alarming 27% among 18-24 year-olds.
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 almost inevitable that some of these will be malicious individuals who will try to post viruses or spyware.
More than three million Facebook users were infected with spyware in less than four days at the beginning of 2008. A Facebook widget called "Secret Crush" or "My Admirer" is believed to have been downloaded by one and a half million users. It claimed to tell users who had a secret crush on them, but in reality fooled them into downloading the notorious Zango spyware. It spread by asking users to forward it to five friends.
Anti-virus vendor Symantec has claimed that vulnerabilities which could be used by hackers to take control of Windows PCs have been found in ActiveX controls offered to users for uploading images to their pages by both Facebook and MySpace. 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.
In January 2008 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. This is biggest privacy breach to date on a social networking site. It was made possible because a security vulnerability, first reported in Autumn 2007, allowed hackers to access the photo galleries of some MySpace users who had set their profiles to private. This is the default setting for users aged under 16. This attack allowed pedophiles and voyeurs to target vulnerable 14- and 15-year-old users.
In December 2007, Brazilian users of Google's Orkut application were attacked by a worm that tried to hijack compromised computers and steal bank account details. It spread via booby-trapped links placed on the personal page of Orkut users and infected users when they viewed messages sent by 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.
How Can You Protect Yourself?
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.
Choose a user name that doesn't include any personal information.
Set up a disposable email account (eg: Hotmail or GMail) that doesn't look like 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 privacy features on the site to control access to your profile.
Be on the lookout for phishing scams.
If you ensure that your software defenses are strong and up-to-date and follow the above guidelines you should be able to enjoy surfing on social networking sites without problems.
If you have young children you should ensure that they are not allowed access to the Internet in an unsupervised environment. It's much better if the computer is in a family area, such as a lounge or dining room, rather than hidden away in a bedroom. Even with older children you should try to keep an eye on their Facebook or MySpace profiles and watch out for any changes in behavior which may suggest that they are encountering online problems.
Ted Hastings has over 35 years experience of IT and education. He has written a textbook on Internet Safety Skills and writes a popular blog entitled Surf Safely.
No comments:
Post a Comment