LinkedIn LockedOut

It seems that cybercriminals are operating more and more now, especially in the ever-increasing social-media areas. LinkedIn is the latest victim, following the events we’ve seen on Twitter this week.

Celebrities were once unknowingly at the centre of this, as fake profiles on the site promised naughty pictures and videos – but surprise, surprise, any offer of nude pictures of Paris Hilton and Christina Aguilera linked straight to sites brimming with malware.

Trend Micro, the security experts, spotted the fake profiles earlier this week. But it was Sophos who spoke out, saying that it was a “a shame that LinkedIn aren’t keeping a closer eye on obviously bogus profiles being created on their site.”

Social Virus

Facebook’s 120m users are being attacked by a virus…

Designed to steal credit card information and ID’s, ‘Koobface’ spreads by sending a message to people’s inboxes, pretending to be from a friend.

If you get a message saying something along the lines of “you look funny in this new video” or “you look just awesome in this new video”, don’t open it…

We all knew it would only be a matter of time before hackers began using social networking sites to try to cash in – although we saw this very same virus on MySpace back in August.

Facebook won’t give any specifics on how many users have been hit by the virus, only saying it’s a small percentage, but with that many users, it’s likely to be a considerable amount of people who have been unfortunate enough to be hit.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Hackers

Not the most original title, I realise, but at least you know what I’m going to talk about.

A while back, I mentioned cyber-crime, so I’m fairly happy that this makes me seem relatively on the ball here, as security consultants have recently highlighted a sharp rise in teenagers getting involved with the more serious aspects of online crime.

Not content with drinking cider in bus-stops or mugging old ladies anymore, the little rascals – as young as 11 apparently – begin with milder stuff, like dealing in computer game hacks, before winding up trying to send malicious viruses, scamming, using phishing kits and exchanging stolen ID and credit card data. Great stuff.

The one “good” thing about all this, I suppose, is that the little darlings nearly ALWAYS get caught, because of a total lack of knowledge; this includes managaging to infect their own computers with their viruses right the way through to videoing themselves being master criminals and posting it to Youtube… under the same alias they just used to hack a site or run a phishing scam. They also share photos and personal details of their life online which makes it very easy computer security experts to track them down and get them arrested.

Words fail me at this point…