I found an article about a woman, Alice, who was sent a message via Facebook telling her about pictures that had been taken during an outing with a friend. However, when she clicked the link to view the pictures, it turned out not to be pictures at all, but an infection.
Hijackers had already taken over the Alice's friend's Facebook account, which is how they sent her the message about the photos. When she opened the link, she gave the hijackers access to her own account, and from there they were able to seize control of her company laptop and access privileged financial data, as well as take over two servers, all before they were detected.
Because of the use of social networks like this in the workplace, hijackers could continue to gain access to more private data that could seriously harm the well-being of many innocent citizens.
And unfortunately, Facebook is not the only endangered network. "Every network we see today has a significant problem with some form of organized threat," says Tim Belcher, CTO for a internet security firm.
What's most disturbing to me about these kinds of intrusions is that we won't see them coming, and are unlikely to realize that communications like the one between the hijackers and Alice are bogus until it's too late.
To read more about this issue click here.
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6 comments:
People will stop at nothing, huh? It's a little bit scary... I mean, is there any way to avoid the threat of infection on the internet? Really? Maybe we should just stay off Facebook. haha, that's what I usually tend to do.
Considering I am an avid user or facebook and many other networks, this concerns me. I defintiely wasn't aware of this happening so I will try to take more caution. Thanks!
I'm always a sucker for those, hopefully my computer hasen't been hacked yet...
The fact that virus's and hacking are so prevalent in social networking sites is nothing new. Even before there was much social networking being done on the internet, viruses were still being sent out through emails. Hackers will stop at nothing. As long as we have the internet, we will have viruses as well. The important thing is to realize this and take precaution when using the internet.
I just try to avoid clicking on links from people i don't normally talk to or links that don't look normal. It is easy to avoid infections on social networking sites if you just pay attention to what you are clicking on.
People definitely need to be aware of things like this going on especially when so many people are avid facebook users. Most people never think about things like this.
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