The Next Big Cybercrime Vector: Social Media

 With attacks on enterprise networks becoming more sophisticated, organizations have stepped up perimeter security by investing in the latest firewall, data protection, and intrusion prevention technologies. In response, hackers are moving to the path of least resistance and looking for new avenues to exploit. Many security experts believe the next wave of enterprise hacking will be carried out via social media channels. Social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, social media marketing blogs and Twitter have become ubiquitous. They help us connect with friends and family, find jobs, share experiences, promote personal interests and business offerings. Social networks have also become a powerful political tool, as the uprising in the Middle East has demonstrated. Government and businesses around the world now recognize the power and benefits of social networks for mass communications, news distribution, as well as promotion of products and services. However, when combined with social engineering efforts, they also have a dark side and pose a tremendous risk to organizations in today’s interconnected world. A good example was “Newscaster” or “Charming Kitten” cyber-attack, which made headlines earlier this year. The attack, according to a report by threat intelligence social media brand marketing provider iSIGHT Partners, originated in Iran and targeted primarily senior U.S. military and diplomatic personnel, congressional personnel, Washington D.C. journalists, think tanks, defense contractors, and United States allies overseas. This state-sponsored attack used fake personas on social networking sites (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+) to establish trust relationships that were later exploited to distribute malware designed to steal passwords and sensitive information. Based on the findings, the attack managed to go undetected from at least 2011, and some of the malware continues to go undetected by many signature-based security tools.

Security Review Policies in Higher Education

Last week the Tor Project created a bit of controversy when it accused Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) of accepting $1 million dollars in order to unmask Tor users. At a high level, Tor is a privacy focused technology that routes traffic to hide the identity of its users. Tor became a favored technology by political activists and whistleblowers who need such protection, as well as cyber criminals and other unsavory types who want to abuse this protection. It isn’t a surprise social media marketing chicago that a government agency would be interested in breaking the veil of anonymity. The FBI supposedly used research from CMU to help bring down an illegal marketplace known as the Silk Road, which offered services ranging from normal legal goods, to forged documents, and a variety of drugs (credit cards, child pornography and murder for hire were supposedly against the site’s terms of service). Almost immediately, CMU received criticism for its perceived role in the event, claiming that the research was arguably unethical and that proper oversight would likely have nixed the project early on. And yet, every time there is a new incident related even tangentially to security occurs, we ask the same questions: “How did this happen?”; “Why weren’t there controls in place?”; “Doesn’t this go against industry best practices?” Granted, these are legitimate questions that should not be downplayed, but the real question is, “Are there even proper security review policies in place to determine if and when a project is deemed acceptable – all in a timely (and relevant) fashion?” Having transitioned from being a security professional in academia to the private sector not long ago, I’d like to share some of my experience from “through the looking-glass,” to help explain and defend some of the criticism CMU is receiving. The first thing to note is that higher education is almost a different cost of social media marketing beast when it comes to security. Those institutions that have a strong security review policy in place often have one thing in common: a breach. In 2014, we saw several university breaches affecting close to a million current, former and prospective staff, faculty, and students. While it’s well known that promoting security is an uphill battle in a world more reliant on technology with each passing day, education faces an even tougher battle.

Design of cyber security awareness game utilizing a social media framework

Social networking sites are a popular medium of interaction and communication. Social networking sites provide the ability to run applications and games to test users' knowledge. The popularity of social networks makes it an ideal tool through which awareness can be created define social media marketing on existing and emerging security threats. This paper proposes an interactive game hosted by social networking sites with the purpose of creating awareness on information security threats and vulnerabilities. The game applies principles of good game design which includes: the decisions over hypermedia, multimedia and hypertext to achieve perception, comprehension or projection, comprehensive database of questions, weighted system, use of practical data, automation, dynamcis, effort and user social media marketing plan pdf acceptance. The aim of the paper is show the effectiveness of using a virtual tool in cyber awareness creation. This paper will thus deal with the proposal of an interactive web-based game which informs and then tests users about potential security threats and vulnerabilities.