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MessageLabs' review of security threats in 2007 reported that attacks on
social networking sites rose from one attack per day in 2006 to more than
1,100 in a 16 hour period during September 2007.
According to MessageLabs, sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo present
rich pickings for cybercriminals as many people give away a lot of personal
information in their profiles.
"The rapid adoption rate of social networking sites such as Facebook has
inevitably been exploited by cybercriminals intent on adding the content in
these sites to their portfolio of tools," said Mark Sunner, chief security
analyst at MessageLabs.
"As we have seen in the past, mass adoption of new communication or
web-based tools is often followed by a rise in the number of threats against
it and the 'Facebook' effect will present new challenges to corporate and
personal online security," Sunner said.
However, MessageLabs said that spam email was the biggest security headache
for surfers and businesses in 2007.
As well as emails offering products for sale, many cybercriminals used spam
to spread malware, often hidden in attachments such as PDF and MP3 files.
It said that 84.6 per cent of all email sent in 2007 was spam - an
incredibly high proportion, even if it is a significantly lower figure than
IronPort Systems' recent claim that 98 per cent of all email is unsolicited.
MessageLabs' assessment comes on the same day as another security firm, PC
Tools, reported on a Russian-made bot that has infiltrated online dating
sites cybercriminals this year, according to security experts.
Source: http://www.webuser.co.uk/news/166576
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