Posts Tagged Facebook
What’s wrong with Twitter?
Posted by Mourad Ben Lakhoua in Cybercrime & Hacking, Internet, News, Social Networking, Web Security on August 9, 2009
On the 6th of August Twitter went down for a pretty long period. After a while a brief message was added on the Twitter status says they’re fighting off a DDOS attack right now. Well the most interesting that the distributed denial-of-service attack also affected Facebook, LiveJournal and Google’s Blogger.
The idea of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the sites is that computers have been compromised by a viruses or other malware and instructed by the Hacker to visit the specific Web sites all at the same time and repeatedly. The barrage of connection requests overwhelms the target sites, making it so that legitimate Web traffic can’t get through.
So this attack requires tens of thousands of machines in which all forms a botnet and in a few seconds can turn any website dawn, as the case of (Finjan report “Your PC might be traded online– without you knowing about it!”).
To secure yourself from being a part of a botnet network is to install an antivirus with the latest signature and in some time check the netstat command on windows to see if there is any unusual connection with your pc.
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Kuwait: Cybercrooks target over a billion users
Posted by Mourad Ben Lakhoua in Social Networking on May 8, 2009
The rapidly increasing interaction of consumers with social online networks, mobile phones and other intelligent devices has brought about significant lifestyle benefits that are under a serious threat from cybercriminals according to an international virus analyst. Addressing the audience of Kuwait’s ICT Security Forum, Stefan Tanase, Malware Analyst, EEMEA Research Center, Kaspersky Lab Global Research and Analysis Team, said that in 2009 social networking sites will be used by around 80 per cent of all Internet users, the equivalent of more than one billion people.
“The growing popularity of social networking sites has not gone unnoticed by cybercriminals; last year, such sites became a hotbed of malware and spam and yet another source of illegal earnings on the Internet. The Kaspersky Lab collection contained more than 43,000 malicious files relating to social networking sites in 2008 alone,” said Tanase.
“Malicious code distributed via social networking sites is 10 times more effective than malware spread via email. Social networks have approximately a 10 per cent success rate in terms of infection compared to less than 1 per cent for malware spread via email,” he said. Stolen names and passwords belonging to the users of social networking sites can be used to send links to infected sites, spam or fraudulent messages such as a seemingly innocent request for an urgent money transfer.
Previously on SecTech there were some post concerning the Social networking security from best practices and some ways to mitigate the risk of using it here is an article from Kuwait that shows that sites of social networking in 2009 will be used by around 80 per cent of all Internet users, the equivalent of more than one billion people, and there is only one solution to secure using these sites is the awareness and follwing some best practices.
[Source: Arab Times]
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Facebook security settings
Posted by Mourad Ben Lakhoua in Social Networking on February 19, 2009
Facebook and other social networking sites can be a great way of keeping in touch with former friends from high school, university and various jobs. But using such sites does come with different risks. Here you can find some best practices that can keep you safe while you still enjoy the benefits of social networking:
* Do not add people you don’t know.
* Be very careful with your public information.
* disable the option that allows software access to your address book.
* Do not add co-workers as friends if you expect privacy at work.
* Don’t tag people on pictures and videos. The practice annoys many people, and it’s an unnecessary way of exposing information.
* Don’t use third-party applications. The apps provided by Facebook are presumably safe, but the rest simply aren’t worth the risk. If you feel you must use them, take precautions.
* Remember that If one of your friends makes a comment on a photo, their friends gain access to your album.
* Remember that the default settings in Facebook are relatively loose. It’s better to add your own settings to make your profile more secure.
So Facebook can be used safely and with little impact on the rest of your life by following these tips.
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