Social Networking

A new KOOBFACE variant is again making the rounds in the social-networking scene. According to Trend Micro researcher, Norman Ingal, the malware employs Facebook’s Private Message feature to proliferate. The threat arrives as a Facebook private message that does not bear a subject but contains a supposed link to a YouTube video. Taking a closer look at the link, however, indicates that it is not an authentic YouTube link as in previous attacks. ...

In Additional to my last post: http://boelectronic.blogspot.com/2010/03/twitter-phished-its-easy-mistake.html We’ve received some questions regarding recent phishing attacks conducted against Twitter.com. Tweets and Direct Messages (DM) containing phases such as “This you??” or “LOL is this you” are linking victims towards a Twitter login phishing page. If the bait is taken and victim enters their password, Twitter’s infamous “fail whale” is displayed and the user is returned to their account. They might not even realize that their account details have been compromised. ...

London, England (CNN) — Twitter this week endured a number of “phishing” attacks, in which some users unwittingly gave out their passwords to malicious sites. Haven’t we all learned to keep our passwords to ourselves, you ask_?_ Perhaps. But the truth is we’re all vulnerable to social engineering, and two major Web trends are creating further confusion for new Internet users. The anatomy of these attacks is simple: You receive a message, seemingly from a friend on a social network. The message contains a link and some strong incentive to click it — in the case of the most recent Twitter attack, the note simply asks “This You????.” When you click the link, you’re prompted to log in again to view the page. ...

(CNN) (CNET) — Facebook this week was awarded a patent pertaining to streaming “feed” technology — more specifically, “dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network,” complementing another patent filing that has been published but not yet approved. The implications for this, as AllFacebook.com pointed out earlier on Thursday, are far-flung: Facebook may choose to pursue action against other social-media sites that potentially violate this patent. ...

In the last two days our lab has detected a flood of email messages that seem to have been sent by the Facebook team urging users to submit a new account agreement. We’ve seen around 16,000 since yesterday. The subject of the message is UPDATED ACCOUNT AGREEMENT and the attached file is called AGREEMENT.ZIP. The message is like the following: Users are required to submit a new account agreement before a certain date. If not, their Facebook account will be restricted. The message also contains detailed instructions on how to do it. ...

A new user in the Netherlands became the 60 millionth person to sign up with LinkedIn, the professional social networking site. Facebook says it has 400 million users of whom half log in every day. Both are fabulous tools for communications and socializing, but making members’ identities and personal information so easily available carries some big risks. Our good friends at Sophos have pointed out that information can be harvested from LinkedIn for spear phishing. The site can contain enough information to be a virtual company directory. ...

A lot of Facebook members are becoming fans of “I don’t care about your farm, or your fish, or your park, or your mafia!!” This is basically a privacy issue I suppose. Shortly after noon today there were about 4,000 Facebook members joining every 10 minutes! If the surge continues it might become a Facebook denial-of-service issue! http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-dont-care-about-your-farm-or-your-fish-or-your-park-or-your-mafia/207382931457 The Wall Street Journal reported on this last night about 10 p.m. At that point they said 2,000 people were joining per minute. “Backlash Against Social Games Brews On Facebook” ...

(CNN)(The Frisky) — For anyone who is remotely active on Facebook, you no doubt have been faced at some point with inane updates on one of your friend’s kid’s colds or how wedding-planning was coming along for one of your engaged buddies. That’s why, when parenting Web site Babble published “Facebook’s Most Annoying Parents,” I immediately thought, “But what about all the annoying couples?” So, without further ado, I present to you the top four most annoying couples on Facebook. ** ** The too-much-in-love couple ...

Making good on a promise delivered just about one year ago, Facebook announced that its popular chat feature can now be accessed through any Jabber (XMPP)-compatible desktop instant messaging software, including AIM, iChat, Pidgin, Adium, Miranda, Trillian and… Users can simply connect their Facebook account with their instant messaging client of choice and they can then chat with Facebook friends without having to stay logged into the social networking site. Further, Facebook Chat has been integrated into the Facebook Connect platform for developers so other services wishing to integrate instant messaging into their sites. ...

Facebook started rolling out a new home page and navigation menus earlier today. And whenever Facebook adds new features, in this case the Applications and Games dashboards, there’s usually a new privacy setting as well. This is what part of the new Applications dashboard looks like. All Facebook has raised some privacy concerns regarding the dashboard’s output. Do you really want all of your “friends” to know what applications you’ve been running? ...