Defusing the Hazards of Social Network Services
SeyedHossein Mohtasebi, Ali Dehghantanha · International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications · 2011
Over the past few years, hundreds of millions of users have employed social network services (SNS) to exchange information. In spite of the pros of using SNS, there are certain vulnerabilities that are most likely to be exploited by perpetrators to reach their destructive goals. Due to an immense amount of personal data shared on and transmitted over SNSs and weak protection mechanisms, the uploaded information are vastly vulnerable to privacy intrusion threats. Furthermore, nearly all SNSs provide a variety of communication channels which opens more ways to malwares to infect users' machines. This paper encompasses threats, vulnerabilities, and risks that endanger privacy of SNS users. It also investigates techniques used by cybercriminals for propagating malicious software (malware) and launching attacks against victims' machines through these services. The paper eventually presents a set of recommendations to eliminate or mitigate the privacy and malware risks