Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Criminals are increasingly turning to social networking sites to commit identity theft and fraud, it has been claimed.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, there is growing evidence that fraudsters are becoming particularly fond of facebook, with growing numbers of people being targeted by their 'friends'.
One such person is Karina Wells, who was alarmed to get a message from her friend asking for money to help him get a ticket home because he was stranded in Lagos, Nigeria.
However, she realized that she was dealing with a phishing scam when the criminal who had hijacked her friend's account began using Americanisms such as "cell", which Australians call mobile phones.
"I pretended that I would help, obtained all the details of where he was and forwarded them to both Facebook and the relevant authorities," she said.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the social networking site said that it is reviewing its security procedures to reduce the risk of people being involved in phishing scams.
Related News:
Get ready for Twishing in 2009 - 1.5.2009
At least three celebrity and political twitter accounts were hacked into this afternoon on a day that began with reports of spam messages infiltrating the social networking site dedicated to status updates.
Mobile spam to rise - 1.5.2009
The top 12 European mobile phone operators are welcoming the new year with expectations of a significant rise in spam messages to cell phones with the increased use of social networking sites.
Innovative attacks of 2008 may haunt coming year - 1.5.2009
This year may see the first large scale attack on the internet if cybercriminals continue targeting vulnerabilities in the TCP/IP architecture.
CastleCops says goodbye - 12.31.2008
Cybercriminals got a surprise Christmas present last week when CastleCops, the all-volunteer online organization dedicated to web security, announced it was shutting down.
Vulnerability would yield rogue CA certificates - 12.31.2008
Yesterday, researchers presented a cyberattack that would allow hackers to create a rogue Certification Authority (CA) certificate, which would give them the power to impersonate any website, include those secured by the HTTPS protocol.
