April 30, 2008
"Beware the dangers of social networking sites such as Bebo, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace and Orkut." This is the advice appearing in the first of two prestigious reports on the state of cyber security that have been released this month (April 2008). While these reports do not specifically focus on the Gulf region, the lessons and implications are directly relevant for all residents in Qatar and the GCC region.
The Internet Security Threat Report, from the anti-virus and security solutions company Symantec, highlights the fact that users of social networking sites may be prone to infection by malicious software (malware) such as worms, viruses, Trojans, and botnets (robotic networks). The use of social networking websites in phishing attacks is symptomatic of the trend towards targeting people, rather than their computers, because people are the weakest link in any internet security process.
The second report is the UK's Information Security Breaches Survey 2008. The survey reports that UK has seen a 10-fold increase in hacker attacks against large companies and that 85% of those companies were attacked in 2007 with the express purpose of stealing confidential customer information for use in electronic fraud. The report found that companies are not taking adequate care to secure their own data; for example, they allow staff to routinely remove USB memory sticks holding confidential information or fail to use encrypted hard drives on their laptops.
Q-CERT advises all users to reduce the risk of compromise by taking basic security precautions: