Avoid Social Networking Dangers

Avoid Social Networking Dangers
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.

by Ted Hastings

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 can be divided into two categories: behavior-based and technology-based.

Behavior-Based

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.

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.

Research carried out in 2007 by Internet Safety website Get Safe Online, showed that one in four UK social networking users had posted confidential personal information, such as their phone number or address on their profiles. 13% of users had posted information or photos of other people online without their consent. This figure rose to an alarming 27% among 18-24 year-olds.

Social networking sites can be the source of threats other than phishing. Eleven students at a high school near Toronto were suspended after posting comments about their principal on Facebook after the school enforced a district ban on electronic devices and announced it would impose a uniform policy. A school spokesman that the comments posted on Facebook amounted to cyber-bullying and described them as vulgar and profane.

Several stories have claimed that young girls have been raped by older men who first met them via MySpace or Facebook, but none of these stories appear to have been conclusively proved. However, it remains a major problem that social networking sites can offer an opportunity for men to meet young girls in an unsupervised environment, something which should be of great concern to parents.

Technology-Based Threats

Social networking sites can also be a source of technology-based threats. They allow millions of people to post content, so it’s inevitable that some of these will be malicious individuals attempting to post malware.

Early in 2008, more than three million Facebook users were infected with spyware in less than four days. A Facebook widget named “Secret Crush” or “My Admirer”, reportedly downloaded by one and a half million users, claimed to tell users who had a secret crush on them, but actually tricked them into downloading the well-known Zango spyware. It spread by prompting users to forward the widget 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.

Late in 2005, 19-year old Samy Kamkar wrote a worm that infected over a million MySpace users and caused a complete shutdown. The Samy worm added a million friends to his profile in only a few hours, adding the string “but most of all, Samy is my hero” to all their profiles. Kamkar was given a sentence of three years probation and 90 days of community service.

In January 2008 the biggest privacy breach to date on a social networking site occurred when a 17-gigabyte file containing more than half a million pictures lifted from private MySpace profiles showed up on BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing service. A security flaw, first reported in Autumn 200, gave hackers access to the photo galleries of some MySpace users who had set their profiles to private, the default setting for users under 16 years of age. This allowed pedophiles and voyeurs who used it to target 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 considered some of the dangers that can be found on social networking sites, but what steps can you take to protect yourself against them? Fortunately, most of the technoology-based attacks can be prevented by the usual software defenses, ie: anti-virus software will protect you against viruses, Trojans and worms, anti-spyware programs will protect you against spyware and adware. A good-quality firewall will protect you against hackers and Internet safety suites will protect you against a variety 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 allow peer pressure to push you into doing something you’re uncomfortable 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 dancing_girl33, rather than jane_brown.

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.

Don’t make comments or post pictures that could prove embarrassing 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.

About the Author:

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