Social Networking Websites Facilitate Hackers to Spread Malware

Threats emanating from social networking websites continue to grow at fast rate as several thousands of malware samples proliferating through social networks have been recorded till date.

Nearly 80% of online users (equivalent to more than one billion people) accessed social networking websites this year, said Stefan Tanase, Regional Researcher of the Global Research and Analytics Team, Kaspersky Lab's EEMEA Research Center, as reported by itweb on June 26, 2009.

Tanase further said that the stupendous growth in social networking websites couldn't remain obscured from cyber criminals last year (2008) for whom these sites were hotbeds of malware and spam dissemination along with an effective medium of making elicit money on the Internet. Malicious files archives at the Kaspersky Lab for the year 2008 alone flared up to over 43,000 files.

It is said that the proliferation of malicious codes using social networks is 10 times more successful than proliferation through e-mail. In fact, the success rate of attacks via social networks is nearly 10% while it is less than 1% in case of e-mail-based spreading.

The information harvested from these attacks, such as usernames and password, are further employed to transmit malicious links to infected sites. Criminals also send fraudulent e-mails to innocent users for urgent money transfer.

Generally, the recipients of fraudulent messages accept them with a thinking that they have been sent by one of their friends. This increases the convenience of criminals to employ such messages for sending links to infected sites.

With the development of Web 2.0, the frequency and volume of attacks aimed at social networking sites and their users have phenomenally spiked up. Websites such as Twitter, Digg and YouTube facilitate criminals to ensnare users much more easily than before.

Therefore, the Kaspersky Lab experts have urged users to be careful of risks and get ready to take necessary precautionary measures to guard their computers.

In a recent attack, a worm spreads on Twitter first installs a JavaScript code and then propagates itself from one profile to another by using Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in malicious inputs on the profile page.

Related article: SoCal Computer Hack Traces to Watsonville

» SPAMfighter News - 7/9/2009