Every day, there are nearly 100 000 malicious redirect attempts via social media site Facebook.
This is according to Kaspersky Lab, which states in its third-quarter spam report that Facebook is a hotspot for redirects to malicious links. At the same time, the share of spam in mail traffic in the third quarter fell 2.7% from the previous quarter.
Stefan Tanase, a senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, argues that malicious links distributed through social networks will always be more effective than classic e-mail spam campaigns.
This, he explains, is because of the social factor. “It has been proven that we, as human beings, tend to trust more links coming from a person we actually know,” he says. “Cyber criminals are essentially exploiting this very trust that we inherently have in each other, as we are transferring it from real life to social networks.”
Monetising malware
Tanase says most users who fall for spam on Facebook end up spamming other users, which shows these threats rely on a sort of worm behaviour, allowing the malware to spread from one profile to another.
“The links that are usually being distributed through social networks eventually lead to the same classic monetisation techniques used by cyber criminals,” he says, adding that examples of this include shady pay-per-click services or advertising networks.
What to do?
He says users should make sure they know their social contacts and should not accept friend invites from people they do not know in real life.
“Be wary of suspicious links coming in private messages from your friends, especially if they are shortened with services like bit.ly,” Tanase says. He also warns that users should be suspicious of Facebook apps and review the permissions of apps before they authorise them, adding that users should also carefully review their privacy and security settings.
Finally, Tanase says users should use a modern, full featured and up-to-date security solution. “Always use the latest version of your operating system of choice, and remember to keep it updated along with all applications running on it.”
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