Wednesday, 10 March 2010
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McAfee says cyber threats boosted by Facebook and Twitter success. So does Cisco…
Security technology company McAfee Inc has published its ‘2010 Threat Predictions’ report. In it McAfee Labs suggests that cyber criminals will this year target social networking sites and third-party applications, use more complex Trojans and botnets to build and execute attacks, and take advantage of HTML 5 to create emerging threats. “Over the past decade, we’ve seen a tremendous improvement in the ability to successfully monitor, uncover, and stop cyber crime,” said Jeff Green, senior vice president of McAfee Labs. “We’re now facing emerging threats from the explosive growth of social networking sites, the exploitation of popular applications and more advanced techniques used by cyber criminals.” According to McAfee Facebook, Twitter, and third-party applications on these sites are rapidly changing the criminal toolkit, giving cyber criminals new technologies to work with and hot spots of activity that can be exploited. The company believes users will become more vulnerable to attacks that blindly distribute rogue apps across their networks, and cyber criminals will take advantage of friends trusting friends to get users to click on links they might otherwise treat cautiously. The use of abbreviated URLs on sites such as Twitter make it even easier for cyber criminals to mask and direct users to malicious Web sites. McAfee Labs predicts that cyber criminals will increasingly use these tactics across the most popular social networking sites in 2010. McAfee’s social networking threat predictions mirror one of the conclusions of Cisco’s ‘Annual Security Report’ for 2009.This document notes that social media experienced explosive growth in 2009, with Facebook alone tripling its active user base to 350mn over the course of the year. Cisco says that social media adoption is expected to continue growing into 2010, especially as more organisations realise the value of social networks as an absolute business requirement. However, cautions Cisco, social networks have quickly become a playground for cyber criminals because members of these sites put an inordinate amount of trust in the other members of their communities and often fail to take precautions to prevent the spread of malware and computer viruses. "The blending of social media for business and pleasure increases the potential for network security troubles, and people, not technology, can often be the source. Without proper cognisance of security threats, our natural inclination to trust our 'friends' can result in exposing ourselves, home computers and corporate networks to malware,” argues Cisco Fellow, Patrick Peterson. “The value of social media is becoming acknowledged increasingly by businesses, but these same organisations need to provide the proper training and education to ensure that employees avoid compromising themselves and their businesses." Still, it’s not all doom virus and gloom. McAfee Labs, for one, also predicts 2010 will be a good year for law enforcement’s fight against cyber crime. “We’re confident that 2010 will be a successful year for the cyber security community,” adds Green. John Williamson |
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