Facebook has gained a lot of popularity in Indonesia. The country is ranked third in the most number of Facebook users. With more end users in Indonesia, phishers seemed to have gained interest in creating phishing sites that target them. Recently, Symantec observed an adult scam spoofing Facebook that targeted Indonesian end users. The phishing Web site was hosted on a free Web hosting site.

The phishing site stated that an application in which end users can view adult videos of popular Indonesian celebrities was available. It was claimed that the videos were taken from hidden cameras in hotel rooms. Users were prompted to enter their login information to gain access to the fake application. To make it look more convincing, it was claimed that the application was from Facebook’s service team. The phishing page displayed a slide show of pornographic images of Indonesian celebrities. The...

We all know spam can be really annoying, and this does not only apply to email messages. Although, with more than 90% of all email being spam, it sure is the biggest piece of cake.

Unfortunately, we have seen that spammers are adapting to all kinds of different platforms, as long as they offer a way of sending messages. Of course, social networks have not been left out by the spammers, since this adds millions of potential spam victims.

There are a lot of different ways that people can interact on social networks and therefore there are also a variety of spam attacks seen. One specific kind of spam that we see is event spam. This method has been around for a few years, but it is still actively used by spammers.

One example is Facebook, which allows its users to create and promote individual events. For this, they can create entries with text, images, and links and send invitations to all of their friends. Well, actually to even more people, because you can also...

Facebook now has over 500 million registered users, which makes this social network (like many other social networks) a very attractive “fishing pool” for attackers. There are so many potential victims that could easily fall for any of the scattered bait. So, it does not come as a surprise that we see another scam campaign launched nearly every week.

Currently, one of the ongoing scams is referring to a guy that apparently took revenge on his ex-girlfriend. The enticing message that has appeared on many profile pages is similar to the following:

“OMG This GUY Went A Little To Far WITH His Revenge On His EX Girlfriend”

Even though it might appear that one of your friends has shared this link, he or she most likely did not do it knowingly. This is because whenever someone follows one of these malicious links, he or she...

Despite threats, companies lack policies on social media at work

Nothing has happened to change the mind of IT management in the last several years; social networks remain a major security concern. What has changed is that social media has become more established, and the ability for IT management to block access to social media is less and less likely. According to some survey work we did, there is only a 1 in 20 chance of your company blocking access to social networking sites.

Part of this is no doubt because of the rush by businesses to adopt social networking in their marketing efforts. Companies have started Twitter accounts, created Facebook fan pages, and established a presence in online communities. What’s clear from our survey is that simply having a presence on social networks is good for business. In our survey, 52% of respondents said that a company’s presence on social media positively impacts their opinion of the company. As for keeping...