Research from Kaspersky Lab shows malware on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace is 10 times more successful at infecting users than e-mail-based attacks. Enterprises and users need to adopt sound security practices to deal with the problem.
That hackers are using sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace to launch attacks is no revelation. New statistics, however, show just how effective malware on social networking sites can be.

In its “Malware Evolution 2008″ report, published in February 2009, Kaspersky Lab revealed that malicious code distributed via social networking sites has a success rate of 10 percent in terms of infections, making it 10 times more potent than malware distributed via e-mail.

“In 2008 we increased the collection of malicious files relating to social networks by approximately 26,000,” said Stefan Tanase, a security researcher for the Kaspersky Lab Global Research and Analysis Team. “In 2008 alone we processed more of those samples than in the total of all years prior to 2008, making the growth rate exponential. Our collection of malicious software samples reached 43,000 at the end of last year.”

Tanase said he expects that number to hit 100,000 by the end of 2009. According to McAfee, 800 new variants of the notorious Koobface virus were discovered in March alone. Social networking sites have also been hit by malware hidden in seemingly legitimate third-party applications.

No particular site is more dangerous than others, Tanase said. Different sites are popular in different regions of the world, and attackers follow the users.

“It’s very hard for social networking sites to do better,” he said. “Their business is about having an easy-to-use Website, so that everyone can join. The problem is that usability and security don’t really go hand in hand most of the time.”

For enterprises, that means developing policies to control the use of social networks by employees. Organizations can instruct employees not to mention the company name on social networking sites, for example, and can couple that with education on configuring privacy settings and general Web safety.

“Blocking access to social networking site[s] is not going to work in the long run,” said Chenxi Wang, an analyst with Forrester Research. “As younger employees join the work force, they increasingly expect to have access to social networking sites from work, [so] having such a restrictive policy will damage the company’s [prospects of attracting] employees and ultimately may become a competitive advantage [to competitors].”

As for basic security advice, Tanase advised users to limit the code executed inside their browsers to trusted sources only and to make sure the operating system, anti-virus application and other software are fully patched and up-to-date.

“When talking about social networks, even though they are made of users wandering throughout cyber-space, we should not forget we’re actually talking about real people, actual human beings that have friends and relationships,” he said. “These relationships are usually based on trust, so the bad guys are trying to exploit this trust.” 

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Social-Networks-10-Times-as-Effective-for-Hackers-Malware-892010/?kc=rss

Security Alert: Twitter Porn Names Scam

Aurora Dizon

May 12, 2009 5:24 am

XSS flaws found in sites of multiple anti-virus firms

Dirty half-dozen

By John Leyden • Get more from this author

Note from Dave:  Soon I hope to start writing some more original content, until then I will continue to post hacker related news on here.  The reason I am post these articles is simple, Cyber Security is not an option.  Many businesses get it, others not so much.  If the FAA and the Pentagon can be successfully hacked,  how safe do you think you really are?  Better to understand your weaknesses and try to mitigate those vulnerabilities than to put you head back in the sand.

Dave

Hackers have broken into the air traffic control mission-support systems of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration several times in recent years, according to an Inspector General report sent to the FAA this week.

In February, hackers compromised an FAA public-facing computer and used it to gain access to personally identifiable information, such as Social Security numbers, on 48,000 current and former FAA employees, the report said.

Last year, hackers took control of FAA critical network servers and could have shut them down, which would have seriously disrupted the agency’s mission-support network, the report said. Hackers took over FAA computers in Alaska, becoming “insiders,” according to the report dated Monday.

Then, taking advantage of interconnected networks, hackers later stole an administrator’s password in Oklahoma, installed “malicious codes” with the stolen password and compromised the FAA domain controller in the Western Pacific Region, giving them the access to more than 40,000 FAA user IDs, passwords, and other data used to control a portion of the mission-support network, the report said.

And in 2006, a virus spread to the air traffic control (ATC) systems, forcing the FAA to shut down a portion of its systems in Alaska, according to the report.

The attacks so far have primarily disrupted mission-support functions, but attacks could spread over network connections from those areas to the operational networks where real-time surveillance, communications and flight information is processed, the report warned.

“In our opinion, unless effective action is taken quickly, it is likely to be a matter of when, not if, ATC systems encounter attacks that do serious harm to ATC operations,” the report concluded.

An audit of the FAA’s air traffic control cybersecurity protection measures finds them lacking and says there have been several breaches by hackers and a virus.

(Credit: U.S. Department of Transportation, Office of Inspector General)

The breaches were possible because Web applications that support the air traffic control system operations are not properly secured to prevent unauthorized access and network intrusion-detection software is not adequately being used to monitor and detect cyberattacks, the report concluded.

The FAA’s increasing use of commercial software and Internet Protocol-based technologies as part of an effort to modernize the air traffic control systems poses a higher security risk to the systems than when they relied primarily on proprietary software, the report said.

“Now, attackers can take advantage of software vulnerabilities in commercial IP products to exploit ATC systems, which is especially worrisome at a time when the Nation is facing increased threats from sophisticated nation-state-sponsored cyber attacks,” the report said.

In general, the nation’s critical infrastructure is increasingly at risk as previously isolated and closed systems are moved to the Internet and commercial software, like Windows, is used, security experts have said.

The air traffic control system auditors said they discovered more than 760 high-risk vulnerabilities in the Web applications tested, including holes that provided “front-door access” to the systems and could allow attackers to inject malicious code onto FAA user computers. Web applications were not adequately configured and the applications with known vulnerabilities were not patched in a timely manner, auditors found.

Meanwhile, intrusion detection systems (IDS) are deployed at only 11 of hundreds of air traffic control facilities and none of the IDS sensors is installed to monitor operational systems at those sites, the report said. Cyber incidents are not effectively monitored or fixed quickly, the report concluded.

In 2008, more than 870 cyber incident alerts were issued to the organization responsible for air traffic control operations and by the end of the year 17 percent (more than 150 incidents) had not been remediated, “including critical incidents in which hackers may have taken over control” of operations computers, the report said.

The FAA is “identifying and fixing weaknesses,” FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown told The Wall Street Journal. “We are working on developing security architecture for that whole system.”

However, Brown dismissed the notion that hackers could get access to critical air traffic control operational systems.

The audit of the air traffic control systems was requested by the ranking minority members of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and its Aviation Subcommittee.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10236028-83.html