Social sites help streamline attacks

Cyber criminals are making their scams more convincing by personalising them and developing specific attacks against groups of users, according to research published this week.

The National Cyber Security Alliance study (NCSA) found that 57 per cent of users of social networking sites such as myspace.com reveal critical information that they would not normally divulge.

Despite awareness about potential security list, a surprising 83 per cent of respondents to the survey said they download files from other profiles even if they are unsure of the content and profile of the other user.

Raimund Genes, chief technology officer of secure content management firm Trend Micro, said concerns such as copyrights and online harassment have been replaced by targeted threats fuelled by financial gain.

'In today’s threat landscape, the motives are most frequently about money gains. As seen from the NCSA study, a large majority of social networking site users are still happy to share their personal details with strangers. This will result into scams for financial profits.'

Raimund also says these security threats are relevant to businesses which use these sites as marketing vehicles. This in turn means social networking is becoming an alternative vehicle for cyber criminals to mass-mail businesses.

What do you think? Email us at: feedback@computing.co.uk

Further Reading:

Social sites open door to malware

Social networking tops 2006 search rankings

2007: The year of social networking