The Inevitable Social Media Hack Scare

Posted Thursday 24th September 2009 by James R in Social Media.

Social Media Hacks

It’s an inevitability that as soon as a program becomes popular, hackers and coders will try to exploit it to their advantage. The same could be said about social media networks, I’m sure you’ve all seen the generic ‘hAha Is tHIS you in VIDoe? – http://www.infectedlink.ru/’ – unfortunately the non-tech savvy will fall prey to these worms and possible viruses added to the already mass infected.

Twitter has recently been subject to an attack once again with the usual scam – ‘rofl this you on here? http: //videos.twitter.secure-logins01.com’ – with a seemingly secure looking URL asking you to login to Twitter. The user will then unknowingly have given their Twitter account away to these malicious people. Unfortunately these attacks will become more frequent with time as there will always be a population of non-savvy users on the internet.

The ultimate question has to be: how do we increase security on large social network sites like Facebook and Twitter without compromising usability?

What Exactly Is A Worm?

First we need to understand what a worm is: in a normal environment a computer worm is a self-replicating code or program that tries to spread itself silently over networks, the internet and any other possible ways, sometimes automatically installing itself on usb drives.

The idea behind a malicious worm isn’t to destroy data, although that is sometimes the case, but to infect, spread and cause general havoc.

However, with the ever expanding social networks we see worm-type programs that automatically spread but only after tricking the user to install or input their personal details, thus stealing their password, and although no actual infection has taken place it is still deemed a worm whereby it then spreads without user input.

Social Media Security

How do we protect ourselves from the onslaught of security related issues that seem to hit our beloved social networks?

We need to teach users how to protect themselves from sites and hackers with malicious intent, and that Google isn’t the internet. These social media sites need to provide users with the information they need to protect their passwords and how to check for spoofing. There is no quick fix but we can progressively change the way some users utilise the internet.

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