Social sites open door to malware

Sites such as myspace are an easy target for malware authors

One in 600 profile pages on social networking sites hosts some form of malware, according to an analysis of more than five billion web requests in July.

The survey, conducted by vendor ScanSafe, also reported that the use of social networking sites, often assumed to be popular only with teenagers, accounted for about one per cent of all web use in the workplace.

ScanSafe chief executive Eldar Tuvey says this could be a concern for businesses.

‘Social networking sites have been newsworthy because of the concern over our children’s safety, but these sites are an emerging and potentially ripe threat that can expose users to harmful software,’ he said.

Most of the pieces of malware identified were spyware and adware, ranging from more benign programs that track usage to difficult-to-remove spyware that can redirect a browser.

Social networking sites such as Facebook, which typically uses a university or college email address to verify a user’s identity, and LinkedIn, a site used for business networking, tended to have better security than more open sites such as MySpace.

ScanSafe also found that spyware increased by 19 per cent in July, while viruses decreased 14 per cent, a continuation of the trend of the past year. Some 13 per cent of these were zero-hour threats: threats that appear before an anti-virus signature becomes available.

‘Many businesses and consumers are unprotected from zero-hour threats because they rely solely on signature-based virus protection,’ said Tuvey.

Some 75 of the 238 viruses found were new viruses, which had not yet had signatures written for them.

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