I-Search #159

Social Security

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                    I-Search Discussion List
            "Social Search Marketing and Technology"
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Moderator:                                          Published by:
Disa Johnson                                        Search Return
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February 19, 2013                                   I-Search #159
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             "Social Security"
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==> Social Security

From: I-Search <>

In continuation of the post last week about security and SEO, 
where some messages from Google Webmaster Tools is notifications 
about hacking, social media sites are also sources of internet 
vulnerability that you need to protect from compromise. For 
brands, social media services cannot ignored. It's true that 
most major brands recognize this but no matter how much attention 
has been given to using social media for marketing purposes, 
there is also the potential disaster, slander and reputation 
management to consider.

For a short period of hours yesterday, a compromised Burger King 
Twitter profile was altered to seemingly mock the franchise that 
they'd been sold to McDonald's (who empathized in a Tweet about 
the incident). This was not exactly a hack, more a compromise of 
the account password. There are password 'rainbow tables' of 
known passwords from the most common, to those that have been 
found out by other means. Gaining access to an account is as 
simple as picking a target and some brute force method.

This is why it is important to have a unique password for each 
service that you use. It's bad enough when an employee Tweets 
something unexpected and awful for PR. When you have trolls 
masquerading as your brand, it can spell greater trouble. Since 
this was a small embarrassment, potentially only good will come 
of it for Burger King. They accumulated more followers and people 
have begun talking about their brand more than ever before. It is 
far worse when something is sent via email.

Sharing on social media exposes more information for hackers to 
use for crafting their compromise. It's one thing to guess a 
password and another to begin messaging and targeting an 
individual to gain greater access. This can start in social media 
and continue to Facebook email where a phishing expedition can 
supply a link with a drive by download Trojan. These are tactics 
which are most often successful pen test (penetration tests by 
white hat hackers testing a system).

It's no longer a matter of not opening anything you weren't 
expecting. A phishing attack is when you're sent a link that you 
are expecting. It also does not have to come from a connection. 
Many phishing email links appear as software updates, and the 
attacker simply spoofs the email header 'from' field so that it 
looks legit. They can scan your social media profile to see what 
software you are likely to be running to target the attack 
accordingly. If you are a juicy target, be careful!


 


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